Why not nuclear power?

[Bearware]

11. It can be a mistake to assume current costs to make something apply directly to disruptive tech

Last edited Mon Sep 23, 2019, 03:05 PM - Edit history (1)

The best example I can think of is SpaceX. A manned flight to the moon and back used to be enormously expensive. Fifty years later after challenging lots of accepted wisdom on how rockets have to work, SpaceX is making a spaceship capable of taking a very sizable crew and payload to the moon and back. Only this time both the booster and the spaceship will land on earth and be reusable. As an afterthought the spaceship is designed so it can be refueled by a sister ship and carry a much larger payload to the moon or Mars.

Most of the main concepts seem obvious to the average person but a lot of technical expertise had to go into making them work. Among the most important may be the ability to ignore conventional wisdom that doesn't apply in this case.

On the construction of nuclear power plants we have blinders imposed by the obvious need to have truly massive reactor vessels (8' steel with perfect welds only made by one company in Japan). Because of the high pressures to get reasonable efficiency out of the steam turbines we need MASSIVE containment buildings, massive amounts of water (usually near large bodies of water) and massive cooling towers.

Molten Salt reactors with the fuel dissolved in the salt have much higher temperatures because of the salt melting and vaporization points. This allows near normal atmospheric pressure, no concerns about fuel rods melting because they are not in the design, continuous refueling, much less fuel to remain critical compared to using fuel rods, no requirement for high volumes of cooling water or massive cooling towers. The reactor vessel can be manufactured in a normal factory and one design I know of, the reactor vessel can be shipped on the highway by truck.

The cost of the land can be much less because far less is needed and it doesn't need to be near lots of cooling water. The reactor building will likely be buried for protection from crashing sabotage aircraft and the thickness of the concrete walls also will be based on that need. Instead of sites consisting of square miles they can probably be a reasonable number of acres - depending on security needs.

When you automate the production of the reactor in a precision factory you eliminate and enormous amount of costs trying to achieve precision on something so large it must be done outdoors.

Molten Salt also has the advantage of freezing if it should leak out of the reactor vessel and the salt bonds as well as becoming a solid greatly reduces the escape of volatile radioactive gasses. Further the reactor design allows it to automatically shut down if it gets too hot with no operator interference and operator interference cannot prevent it.

The above is why I think the liquid fuel Molten Salt Fast Reactor is a disruptive a technology on a scale similar to SpaceX.

P.S. Most nuclear reactors come with a multi-month to multi-year "backup battery". It's technical name is "Nuclear Fuel".