Spanish engineering firm Empresarios Agrupados (EA) has been contracted to be the Architect Engineer for a five-hundred-megawatt ThorCon molten salt reactor (TMSR-500) which will be deployed to Indonesia when complete. EA said that the contract which was signed on the 8th of November 2021 makes a commitment to long-term collaboration between EA and ThorCon which is located in the U.S. EA added that “While ThorCon will be providing its molten salt reactor technology, EA will provide both its pool of 1250 engineers as well as its 50 years of experience with nuclear projects.”
In the role of Architect Engineer, EA will support ThorCon across a broad range of activities, including but not limited to project management, document control, code compliance, site preparation, pre-construction activities and licensing agreements. In addition, EA will also provide engineering services to ThorCon throughout the lifecycle of the project, from design engineering to construction, operation and eventual decommissioning. EA will collaborate with other partners who have already been selected by ThorCon.
Maria Teresa Dominguez will be leading the project in the advanced projects division of EA. “It will be an excellent opportunity to work with ThorCon in a technology on which we have extensive experience through our involvement in the last 50 years in nuclear projects, including Gen IV reactors, as well as, in the last years, in renewables, where molten salt systems are also being implemented. Our mission then will be to transfer this Empresarios Agrupados experience to the TMSR-500 reactor to succeed in their objectives of performance and economics.”
David Devanney is the CEO of PT ThorCon Power Indonesia. He said, “We are delighted to join forces with Empresarios Agrupados. They are a world leader in nuclear engineering and have extensive experience in plant design, procurement, construction and operation that will be invaluable to the TMSR-500 program. This is a defining moment for the project and bodes well for its successful completion.”
Martingale is the U.S. company who developed the ThorCon thorium salt reactor. The Indonesia Thorium Consortium (ITC) is composed of state-owned companies PT Industry Nuklir Indonesia (INUKI), PT PLN and PT Pertamina. In October of 2015, Martingale and ITC signed an agreement to build a ThorCon reactor to generate electricity.
In March of 2017, the ITC completed a preliminary feasibility study on the ThorCon proposal which was positive. The ITC then sought approval from Indonesia's National Atomic Energy Agency (Batan). The company says that after testing in a full-scale pre-fission test facility, the phase one plan is to build a five-hundred-megawatt ThorConIsle unit comprised of two modules to prove the design. They will then proceed to shipyard construction of further units to ultimately provide three gigawatts of electricity to the Indonesian power grid.
PT PAL Indonesia (PPI) is the state shipbuilding company. They signed an agreement in July of 2019 to conduct a development study and construct a five-hundred-megawatt power plant. PAL will build the reactor as an EPC contractor and put it on a six-hundred-foot barge built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering in Okpo, South Korea. The completed thorium power plant will be towed to a site in Indonesia, ballasted to the seabed and connected to the grid.
According to ThorCon, it will only require twenty-four months from start of construction before each plant can be connected to the grid. This approach will also allow for scalability of the ThorCon plants. As many as ten gigawatts of power can be produced annually per shipyard assembly line once production is ramped up. The estimated cost of a two reactor one gigawatt plant will be about one billion two hundred million dollars.