Estonia is a small country in Northern Europe. The Gulf of Finland is to the north and the Baltic Sea is to the west. The country of Latvia lies to the south and Russia lies to the east. Estonia has a land area of about sixteen thousand square miles which includes the mainland and over two thousand islands. It has a population of one million three hundred thousand people.Estonia is a developed country with a high-income economy and enjoys a high level of civil liberties and social welfare programs.
Moltex Energy is a nuclear technology company based in the U.K. It was created in 2013. Their Stable Salt Reactor (SSR) is a Generation IV nuclear reactor design that uses molten salts as its coolant. A study of six different molten salt reactor designs in 2015 concluded that the Moltex SSR was the best fit for construction in the U.K.
Fermi Energia is a utility company in Estonia that supplies a variety of equipment and services to its customers. It has selected the Moltex SSR as a preferred technology for the production of low-carbon energy in Estonia. Moltex announced yesterday that the two companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that they will collaborate on a feasibility study for siting a Moltex SSR. They will also work on a suitable licensing program.
Moltex issued a statement in which they pointed out that Estonia currently gets most of its power from oil shale although they intend to stop using this source by 2030. Wind power is plentiful in Estonia, but they need an alternative reliable energy source to be self-sufficient in energy production. Estonia’s neighbors including Latvia, Lithuania and Finland are all importers of electricity. Moltex feels that their SSR would enhance the energy security of the whole region.
Simon Newton is the business development director of Moltex. He said, “Estonia is a vibrant, entrepreneurial and forward-looking economy and is the perfect place to benefit from the Moltex Stable Salt Reactor technology.”
Kalev Kallements is the CEO of Fermi Energia. He said, “Our ambition is to deploy the first fourth generation small modular reactor in the EU, here in Estonia, by the early 2030s. We are delighted to be working closely with Moltex Energy on this vital project. It is important for Estonia to have its own source of clean, cheap energy and Moltex’s innovative technology has huge potential for us.”
The Moltex SSR reactor design contains no pumps and relies exclusively on convection from static vertical fuel tubes in the core to send heat to the steam generators. Unlike other molten salt reactor designs, the SSR uses conventional fuel assemblies instead of a pumped molten salt fuel. The fuel assemblies are positioned in the center of a tank that is half full of the molten coolant salt. The molten salt conveys heat away from the fuel tubes in the middle of the tank to the steam generators located on the periphery. The reactor is not pressurized and operates at temperatures between five hundred and six hundred degrees Centigrade.