![]() ![]() Technical progress is still slow after decades of investment, but fusion companies are focused on how to contain the plasma required to replicate the thermonuclear conditions of the sun. Most advanced is the “pebble bed” reactor, cooled by a gas such as helium China is ready to connect the first such reactor to the grid this year. These reactors are designed to be safer than traditional water-cooled reactors, using coolants such as liquid sodium or molten salts instead. ![]() Although they produce far less power, their smaller size and use of off-the-shelf components help reduce costs. SMRs are a slimmed-down version of conventional fission reactors. Canadian company Terrestrial Energy plans to build a 190 MW plant in Ontario, with its first reactors producing power before 2030 at a cost it says can compete with natural gas. TerraPower-Bill Gates is an investor-forged an agreement with Beijing to construct a demonstration plant by 2022, but the Trump administration’s restrictions on Chinese trade make its future questionable.Īnother generation IV variant, the molten-salt reactor, is safer than earlier designs because it can cool itself even if the system loses power completely. China is building a large scale sodium-cooled reactor in Fujian province that’s expected to begin operation by 2023, and Washington-based TerraPower has been developing a sodium-cooled system that can be powered with spent fuel, depleted uranium, or uranium straight out of the ground. While NuScale’s approach takes traditional light-water-cooled nuclear reactors and shrinks them, so-called generation IV systems use alternative coolants. No orders meant prices wouldn’t come down, which made the deal unsustainable. It had the backing of corporate owners Babcock & Wilcox, one of the world’s largest energy builders, but the pact was shelved after less than three years because no new customers had emerged. In 2011, Generation mPower, another SMR developer, had a deal to construct up to six reactors similar to NuScale’s. NuScale has a deal to install 12 small reactors to supply energy to a coalition of 46 utilities across the western US, but the project can go ahead only if the group’s members agree to finance it by the end of this year. (A typical high-cost conventional fission plant might produce around 1,000 MW of power.) NuScale Power, based in Portland, Oregon, has a 60-megawatt design that’s close to being deployed. One of the leading technologies is the small modular reactor, or SMR: a slimmed-down version of conventional fission systems that promises to be cheaper and safer. ![]()
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