A Natrium Reactor to be built in Wyoming!

[specinho + 475]

On 6/3/2021 at 10:01 PM, turbguy said:

Google "Fermi Unit 1".

 

another type of nuclear reactor with molten salt as agent of energy storage?

Misled by the name "sodium reactor"........ If only it could  be that simple to produce energy ..............

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

15 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

The loss in efficiency of immediately producing electricity and storing it in a battery vs. storing as heat is less than 10%. However, you aren't addressing the capital and operating costs of molten salt vs. batteries. 

The efficiency of converting electricity to heat is 100%. This begs the question, if salt storage yields much better returns then why is everyone installing batteries instead?

To have enough batteries to store a nuclear plant's excess would be... interesting. In terms of cost, the molten salt system is going to come out on top. The best part is scalability (build a bigger storage tank but keep the heat exchangers the same size). Remember, this system happens to work with nuclear because of its thermal nature, but it wouldn't work well with wind and solar. Why would they use it if they didn't believe it was better than batteries? There's plenty of info out there on batteries for them to make conclusions from. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

15 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Please do tell more about how synthetic fuel is the best in terms of financial benefit

Selling an energy product that has a premium on it. If you convert the BTU's in a gallon of gasoline to kWh, and then find how many cents per kWh it is, you wouldn't be surprised to see how expensive gasoline is compared to electricity kWh for kWh. 

No electric vehicles necessary for this plan. No worries about reliability or power density, just the same old system we've had with carbon neutral fuel. Using this option also means we don't have to drain money and resources for big battery farms. We just build small chemical plants with petroleum storage tanks. While these plants would require some rare metals for catalysts, it wouldn't compare to the tons of lithium going into a Tesla battery farm. 

[EDIT] Forgot to mention: you also get a green source of feedstock for all the other shit we make with oil 

Edited June 5, 2021 by KeyboardWarrior

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

I should have mentioned that a syngas cycle wouldn't be possible with this reactor design because of temperature limitations. High temperature gas reactors can run the sulfur iodine cycle for thermochemical hydrogen production, which is greatly preferred over electrolysis because of energetic loss to reach working electric power from a thermal source. Unfortunately, the new variants of HTGR's haven't seen commercial installation yet.

One further benefit of these is that the associated high temperature of the cycle allows higher Carnot efficiencies (50%+). 

[Jay McKinsey + 1,491]

34 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

To have enough batteries to store a nuclear plant's excess would be... interesting. In terms of cost, the molten salt system is going to come out on top. The best part is scalability (build a bigger storage tank but keep the heat exchangers the same size). Remember, this system happens to work with nuclear because of its thermal nature, but it wouldn't work well with wind and solar. Why would they use it if they didn't believe it was better than batteries? There's plenty of info out there on batteries for them to make conclusions from. 

Batteries already exist that are much larger than the storage capacity of this nuclear plant. According to their documentation the storage is 155MW/853MWh.

https://www.terrapower.com/resources/#group_2398-1

Phase 1 of the Moss Landing Battery went online 6 months ago at 300MW/1200MWh. By August it will be up to 582MW/2330MWh.

You can't just infinitely scale the storage without scaling everything else. If they thought they could increase the storage at all they would be making a huge deal out of it. 

Just because the system is fully thermal does not mean it is lower cost than thermal plus battery. If those salt tanks repeatedly rupture like they did at Crescent Dunes then battery is far cheaper and more efficient.

 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Jay McKinsey

[-trance + 114]

14 hours ago, specinho said:

 

another type of nuclear reactor with molten salt as agent of energy storage?

Misled by the name "sodium reactor"........ If only it could  be that simple to produce energy ..............

 

Not a molten salt, a melted (liquid) metal.  Think of mercury.

[markslawson + 1,061]

21 hours ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

They definitely won't be better off with batteries. Amazing how thermodynamics and finance cross over in this industry. You'll find that molten salt thermal energy storage yields far better returns than batteries. 

I'm sure on a straight thermal energy per whatever molten salt would be better. I was thinking more about the difficulties of using molten salt. Batteries, for all their faults, are at least widely used, well understood technology. but I think I also agreed with others that to have an energy store with a dispatchable power source didn't make much sense - unless, now that I think about it, the salt was heated as a by product of generation and took a while to cool down after the reactor was powered down.. but even so why not just keep the reactor going?

[Jay McKinsey + 1,491]

1 hour ago, markslawson said:

I'm sure on a straight thermal energy per whatever molten salt would be better. I was thinking more about the difficulties of using molten salt. Batteries, for all their faults, are at least widely used, well understood technology. but I think I also agreed with others that to have an energy store with a dispatchable power source didn't make much sense - unless, now that I think about it, the salt was heated as a by product of generation and took a while to cool down after the reactor was powered down.. but even so why not just keep the reactor going?

The reactor uses two salt loops. One is internal for cooling and fuel, it heats the external salt through an exchanger. The external salt is the only mechanism the reactor uses for electrical generation, via a heat engine. Its purpose is to allow the reactor to run at a constant rate yet still be load following.

Edited June 6, 2021 by Jay McKinsey

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

The reactor uses two salt loops. One is internal for cooling and fuel, it heats the external salt through an exchanger. The external salt is the only mechanism the reactor uses for electrical generation, via a heat engine. Its purpose is to allow the reactor to run at a constant rate yet still be load following.

I don't think there's a salt loop for cooling and fuel. It's a molten sodium fast reactor. Molten salt fast reactors haven't been deployed at this scale yet.

[Jay McKinsey + 1,491]

2 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

I don't think there's a salt loop for cooling and fuel. It's a molten sodium fast reactor. Molten salt fast reactors haven't been deployed at this scale yet.

https://www.terrapower.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/TP_2021_MCFR_Technology.pdf

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

1 minute ago, Jay McKinsey said:

https://www.terrapower.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/TP_2021_MCFR_Technology.pdf

This is what I'm reading:

https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/TerraPower,-GEH-introduce-Natrium

Sodium fast reactor. Must be something one of us is missing.

Also Jay, could you tell me how much those battery systems you mentioned cost? 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

@Jay McKinsey

I think the model you linked me to is different than the one being built. It's another Gen IV model. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/commercializing-standalone-thermal-energy-storage/#gref

2016

https://www.solarthermalworld.org/news/molten-salt-storage-33-times-cheaper-lithium-ion-batteries

2018

EDIT: Moss landing cost 2.4 billion. They couldn't possibly justify adding this to a nuclear plant. Their estimated cost is typical for a nuclear facility and it includes the salt storage cost. 

Edited June 6, 2021 by KeyboardWarrior

[Jay McKinsey + 1,491]

31 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

@Jay McKinsey

I think the model you linked me to is different than the one being built. It's another Gen IV model. 

I agree. I was reading one of their other designs. Do you agree that Natrium still has two salt loops, one for cooling and one for the energy generation / storage?

[Jay McKinsey + 1,491]

1 hour ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/commercializing-standalone-thermal-energy-storage/#gref

2016

https://www.solarthermalworld.org/news/molten-salt-storage-33-times-cheaper-lithium-ion-batteries

2018

EDIT: Moss landing cost 2.4 billion. They couldn't possibly justify adding this to a nuclear plant. Their estimated cost is typical for a nuclear facility and it includes the salt storage cost. 

Where did you get that 2.4 billion number??

The reported cost was $400 million for Phase 1 and 2 purchased from Vistra. 400MW/1600MWh The report is behind a paywall but if you are quick you can read down to where they cite it before the block arrives https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Monterey-Bay-power-plant-now-a-record-breaking-15872503.php

On another search Google surfaced the text from the article: 

Vistra's $400 million Moss Landing battery system is designed to capture excess power when the grid's supply is abundant — such as the daylight hours when solar farms operate at peak capacity.Jan 15,   https://www.sfchronicle.com ›

 

Phase 3 was purchased from Tesla at $80 million for 182.5-MW, 730 MWh   no paywall on this one https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/idlkl4qwa3ecewvikwxnya2

The Tesla deal came about a couple years after the Vistra, that is how fast battery costs are falling.

After the debacle at Crescent Dunes any white papers on low molten salt storage costs aren't worth the pixels they take up on screen. It is another technology that has been around for decades and gone nowhere except up in flames. 

Edited June 6, 2021 by Jay McKinsey

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

10 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Where did you get that 2.4 billion number??

Misreading of a google search result. I was in a hurry. $400 million is the correct number. 

 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

11 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

I agree. I was reading one of their other designs. Do you agree that Natrium still has two salt loops, one for cooling and one for the energy generation / storage?

Well, if it's a sodium fast reactor then there should be a sodium to boiler loop and a sodium to salt loop for storage. Then a salt to boiler loop for "discharge". So yes, two salt loops but not for direct reactor cooling (it's fair to say indirect if the "battery" is being charged). 

[markslawson + 1,061]

On 6/6/2021 at 12:23 PM, Jay McKinsey said:

The reactor uses two salt loops. One is internal for cooling and fuel, it heats the external salt through an exchanger. The external salt is the only mechanism the reactor uses for electrical generation, via a heat engine. Its purpose is to allow the reactor to run at a constant rate yet still be load following.

Jay - this is exactly the same mechanism as used in an ordinary reactor but the ordinary reactor uses water which is not nearly as hard to handle as molten salt. What I think you mean is that the molten salt stores more energy in the loop - that's all fine but small scale reactors load follow quite well (think nuclear submarines) so we're back where we started in asking whether molten salt is worth all the additional trouble. Looks like I'll have to read the stuff to work it out, but thankyou for the information anyway..

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

On 6/7/2021 at 7:06 PM, markslawson said:

Jay - this is exactly the same mechanism as used in an ordinary reactor but the ordinary reactor uses water which is not nearly as hard to handle as molten salt. What I think you mean is that the molten salt stores more energy in the loop - that's all fine but small scale reactors load follow quite well (think nuclear submarines) so we're back where we started in asking whether molten salt is worth all the additional trouble. Looks like I'll have to read the stuff to work it out, but thankyou for the information anyway..

I think he was trying to make a point about corrosion problems. It's a sodium cooled reactor though, so not cheeky but not terrible. This technology was the most likely candidate to be tried first, since it's been around since the 50's. 

[markslawson + 1,061]

On 6/10/2021 at 1:45 PM, KeyboardWarrior said:

I think he was trying to make a point about corrosion problems. It's a sodium cooled reactor though, so not cheeky but not terrible. This technology was the most likely candidate to be tried first, since it's been around since the 50's. 

Now I'd have to read the material to work out what everybody is saying which is way too much effort for a technology still under development.. maybe I'll move on but thanks anyway.. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

4 hours ago, markslawson said:

Now I'd have to read the material to work out what everybody is saying which is way too much effort for a technology still under development.. maybe I'll move on but thanks anyway.. 

All you have to do is look at World Nuclear's page on Gen IV reactors. In about 15 minutes you'll be informed on the future of nuclear power. The design descriptions also include responses to the simple arguments about waste, proliferation, etc.