There are a number of different companies that are working on the development of new designs for nuclear reactors. Some of these are in the planning stages and others are actively building test systems. There are approaches that employ alternatives to the light-water reactors that are employed in most of the nuclear power stations around the world. There are serious difficulties for such companies to raise funds for their projects from private investors given all the concerns about nuclear power, especially since the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in 2011. Federal funds are mainly available for refining the light-water reactor design and not for create entirely new types of reactors. In addition to technical problems involved in developing new types of reactors, there are also questions about how long it will take to complete a new reactor and whether or not regulators will ultimately license a new reactor for commercial power generation.
Transatomic Power (TP) is a new company that is actively raising funds for the development of their new reactor design. They had raised one and a half million from angel investors and now they have received two million from the Founders Fund venture capital investment firm. FF Science, a section of Founders Fund, is targeted at science and engineering companies.
TP was started by two MIT nuclear engineering students. They want to create a source of reliable carbon free energy by burning some of the hundreds of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel generated by the world's nuclear power reactors. TP is planning on using the infusion of cash from FF Science to refine their computer simulations and to test materials that they intend to use in their molten salt reactor. TP intends to collaborate with universities including MIT on gathering better data on the performance and corrosion of its chosen materials. FF Science understands that this project is a risky long term investment and they find that acceptable.
The TP approach is to dissolve spent nuclear fuel in a molten salt. One benefit of this approach lies in what happens if the reactor overheats. In such a case, a plug at the bottom of the tank of molten salt will melt and allow the molten salt to drain into a holding tank below the main tank where the molten salt will cool in a few hours thus preventing a core meltdown.
There has been research on molten salt reactors for decades utilizing sodium. Unfortunately, there have been major problems with molten salt reactor design that have prevented this new approach from developing reactors which could be used for commercial power generation. Hopefully, the TP team will be able to find a way to deal with these problems and create a reactor design that can help rid the world of the huge quantities of spent nuclear fuel that currently pose a threat to the environment and human health.
