Site visit: Building the nuclear reactors of the future 

My money is on Terrestrial Energy or Moltex.

I know about ThorCon and they are good. He say in a different interview that he consider the other MSR companies colleagues rather than competitors, as long as Copenhagen Atomics does not have a product fully on the marked. So they *should* collaborate on some research and development. However, Copenhagen Atomics are way ahead of ThorCon since they prioritise testing over modelling. The original MSR was infamous for having to be shut down all the time to fix issues with pumps and plumbings, so testing is of the essense. ThorCon also have a different design philosophy: floating barges (which CA say will add time to the development cycle), also not a pure thorium reactor - they even admit they mainly add thorium to the fuel mix for the hype. They do plan on using shipyard automated production facilities, which might decrease production time dramatically. But I think the reactors and power plants need to be designed specifically for this kind of production, CA go for a model where subcontractors provide the most parts rather than a giant automated factory. Also, I know Indonesia is a huge emerging enegy marked. But CA can place their reactors everywhere, not limited to large harbour cities without existing energy infrastructure. Providing energy for new industry like synthetic fuels, carbon storage or desalination plants is a huge marked on its own.

@@migBdk Both have advantages and disadvantages. Thorcon will likely go straight uranium, a good move, thorium just adds cost and complexity. CA needs to find a host country and it took Thorcon several years to establish that. Barge construction makes everything go faster, not slower, maritime laws are more lax than terrestrial. Something like 80% of the world's population is within transmission line distance to a port or major river and certainly, the industrial applications are in that range. I see thorium as a handicap at this stage in gen. IV development. It requires a breeder reactor which adds cost and complexity. Also, there is no shortage of uranium, we have about 2 billion years worth.

Experience in building reactors will be more important that having plenty of the thorium ore.

MSRs can run on any sort of fissile fuel depending on the design. A really compelling fuel cycle is to use a combination of plutonium and spent nuclear fuel. That cycle takes care of the problem of excess plutonium stockpiles and nuclear waste in one go.

I don't understand your question. Do you mean the flouride salt with thorium vs flouride salt with uranium 233? That is what this is.

@@royh6526 The main difference seems to me that CA uses heavy water as moderator and pumps the salt through a heat exchanger. The DFR on the other hand has no moderator and uses liquid metal as coolant. But both are capable to breed U 233 from Th 232, so have a similar goal. So what are the advantages/disadvantages of these different approaches?

​@@friedrichkoernerfast reactors can be more technically difficult and also require much larger inventory as the neutron has a harder time interacting with the atom in the fast spectrum. This larger inventory makes it much harder to power the world on existing stocks of the kick starter fuel, existing stockpiles of nuclear waste.

The secret is ultra purity (lack of oxygen)

Iconel and Niconel alloys, same stuff that a lot of nukes use. It is TOUGH stuff and costs a lot more than regular piping.

Copenhagen Atomics recently released another video addressing this question. In short, they filter the salt and ensure it remains pure.

What about chromium migration of Hastelloy at temperatures 🌡️ approaching 700C making the alloy brittle? What about the lost efficiency due to the physics of fluid dynamics? Pipe size matters. Good idea to invest in research reactors and there are promising niche uses but not to deploy for large scale economic power solutions. For fossil fuel ⛽ transition we need safe, tested and proven effective solutions now. Most of all we need a large scale commercial nuclear waste repository. Australia should become the waste materials repository. Australia 🦘 exports uranium and has a responsibility for the residual end products. In exchange the world 🌎 as part of a Paris Style agreement could help Australia transition from coal to nuclear ☢️.