An industry veteran is touting a new molten salt reactor as the next big nuclear thing. Thermal molten salt has some growing pains , but Elysium says it has circumvented these. Elysium’s first plant would be a 10 MWe demonstration plant to supply a small town. A new molten salt reactor design can scale from just 50 Megawatts electric (MWe) to 1,200 MWe, its creators say, while burning up nuclear waste in the process. ☢️ You like nuclear. So do we. Let’s nerd out over nuclear together. Energy Daily founder Llewellyn King suggests the large reactor represents a move of public sentiment after public obstacles have continued to push the timeline on popular tiny reactor startup NuScale. King explains the way light-water reactors—the majority of nuclear plants in the world and all the nuclear plants in the U.S. today—grew to dominate nuclear energy development the way internal combustion engines eclipsed and then crushed the original electric cars over 100 years ago. That means that while scientists first developed molten salt reactors decades ago, they’ve never had the opportunity, King says, to gain public favor. The combination of factors is redolent of politics and human whims, seen over and over […]
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