They can't even pay for the little bit of fuel they save. The intermittency renewables introduce to the grid makes the necessary backup sources much less efficient. That's why they depend on perverse incentives like the wind production tax credit that pays reliable sources to shut down whenever the unreliable renewable sources happen to be producing anything. Moreover, renewables consume orders of magnitude more raw materials and land to build while having a much shorter lifespan than any other energy system.

@@phamnuwen9442 This is the juncture where both environmentalism and conservationism start butting heads. If you only endorse renewables (especially solar and wind), you cannot be both. For me responsibility not only means curbing climate change but also making the most using as little resource as possible.

@@ManOfLore1 Climate change is a vastly exaggerated issue, but if you care about it, the only way to reduce emissions in a significant way is nuclear. We still need to increase the amount of fossil fuels we consume because nuclear can't be scaled up fast enough to provide the entire world with cheap, reliable energy in a reasonably short timeframe. At least not with current nuclear regulations and political interference. Whenever climate alarmists start advocating for dramatic deregulation of nuclear development and the construction of new reactors, I will consider taking them seriously.

I believe salt is only corrosive when in contact with moisture, which if kept a trace levels should prevent significant corrosion. The advantage of a stable salt reactor is even further minimisation of corrosion risk, due to not needing to circulate the radioactive salt around the vessel where joints and fitting are present. Fuel pins here can be milled from a solid piece of metal, and replaced on an individual basis.

@@adamdanilowicz4252 Thank you for these useful insights

He stated they want to avoid that because the coolant eventually leaks.

@@daveb4446 Has that been proven, or is it just supposition?

@@daveb4446 Also hard to model due to delayed neutrons and plating out in the heat exchangers. SSR bypasses all that.

@@killcat1971 Proven.

Once you have full demand sized nuclear power that can load follow, what would be the point of adding wind or solar to that nuclear cost?

We know fission works, nobody knows if fusion will ever be possible/economical. Money is better spent on a sure thing.

After looking at the others, I believe Moltex is the best design. No flibe means no tritium (which enviros hate). Because they use chloride salts. And the grid reserve just kicks butt because it's already thermal (you can't do that with electrical, like from solar because you lose the ⅔rds converting that heat back into electricity. So batteries are better for solar and molten salts for nuclear. This is exactly what I was thinking earlier but I thought they'd use Tesla style batteries for storing electricity. But molten salt is still cheaper.

@@fireofenergy Any high-temperature nuclear reactor design can use the same kind of thermal storage strategy, it's not exclusive to Moltex. I think the Elysium Industries is quite a bit better, no fuel processing needed and the modularity is much better, check them out. They have several presentations on youtube.

@@chapter4travels Nah... No one else rids the fuel in the plumbing problem, will never get passed...

@@fireofenergy I have no idea what you're talking about. Any high-temperature reactor can put in a clean salt loop heat exchange and use the same storage method.

I found this out somewhere later. Yes it was partly due to the fuel shuffling, but also that from a regulatory perspective their modular brick design didn't work. Each size of reactor would have to be certified from scratch as a new reactor. This meant they essentially had to pick a single size and run with it and a circular core has better neutronics.

Probably to counteract neutron leakage. Every deviation from a perfect sphere is a sacrifice in neutrons. Originally, Dr Scott felt the sacrifice was worth it in order to make it easier to scale. Priorities have changed.

@RiverBlue11 You're probably not using the correct terms, but I think I get what you're getting at. If you want to transmute elements, you would put a "blanket" around where the fission reaction takes place. This would catch the neutrons escaping the reaction area and use them to make new elements. Blankets have been used in scientific research reactors to produce medical isotopes. Or in weapons reactors to produce nuclear weapons isotopes like plutonium-239. You can put a blanket around any reactor design. From cubic to the spherical. The question is as always, how do you put the transmutation target in, and how do you get it out. The original Oak Ridge 2 fluid molten salt reactor proposed design had a fluid blanket of thorium rich molten salt that would be separated by graphite tubing. In the Moltex concept (the old, square one) you could simply make the outer assemblies the transmutation targets while the middle of the reactor assemblies are filled with reactor fuel. In this new concept, (the cylindrical one) you would again, have the middle assemblies be filled with reactor fuel and undergo fission. Then the outer assemblies closer to the reactor vessel wall would be the transmutation targets. Blankets are however, frowned upon in modern reactor designs because the IAEA does not like their potential to produce nuclear weapons material. I don't think Moltex would put a blanket in. Instead they would probably line the reactor walls with a neutron reflector. You could do this with tons of lead, or more cheaply (and more structurally sound), slabs of stainless steel. Steel that is thick enough can actually reflect neutrons: www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power-plant/nuclear-reactor/neutron-reflector/ This would improve neutron economy by reducing losses of neutrons flying away into the walls of the reactor vessel.

@RiverBlue11 I mean, this kind of science isn't being obstructed. It's being researched and developed right now. The question is as always around funding. I have serious doubts as to the viability of venture capital in being able to bring this reactor to full scale. That's just not how VC operates. Every vampire capitalist wants a quick project to make a quick buck on, often within 2-3 years. And if they find out the project isn't working, they would hire marketing firms to hype the company up, force the company into a share offering, pump the price, then dump his share. We have seen this hundreds of times with tech startups. I think Moltex is also receiving government funding so this deadly fate might be avoidable but it would still massively set Moltex back if a VC did a pump and dump on it. As for your idea about neutron "gates", that's not how it works. When neutrons are discussed, they are not considered in terms of individual particles. Billions of neutrons are created per second that a fission reaction proceeds. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_flux The direction and the amount of neutrons per second that a reaction kicks off is completely random. It is impossible to design a "gate" that individually catches, or releases, a single neutron. You could only do that if you had a particle accelerator that produced and redirected a single neutron. This is not practical to run a reactor. In a reactor you can only put things in a general direction of where you expect neutrons to be coming from. So in a real life reactor, you expect a lot of neutrons to be escaping _radially_ - that is to say, streaming out from the centre of the reactor out the sides. So a lot of reactors, would use _radial reflectors_ to stop neutron loss. See this picture of the ORNL High Flux Isotope Reactor design: neutrons.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/HFIR-reflector-and-fuel-element.jpg You can see that the reflector surrounds the core like a nut might encircle a bolt. There are no gates, no chambers, no sorters. Just sheer volume of material all around the core. It just isn't possible to predict every single neutron kicked off by a fission reaction to then position a catcher or reflector in time.

@RiverBlue11 no worries. If you ever have the time, look into this free online lecture series on radiation, nuclear science, physics of nuclear fission, and applications of nuclear science: ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-01-introduction-to-nuclear-engineering-and-ionizing-radiation-fall-2016/lecture-videos/index.htm The course is heavy on the medical side because that's the professor's speciality but there's a lot of info on the basics.

The designers consulted with both nuclear regulators and reactor designers and engineers with long experience in the field. The square design was eliminated for simplicity. Less machinery that can break down in the fuel shunting process, particularly in the core where maintenance would have to be carried out by remote control and thus be very expensive and complicated. The fewer moving parts and maintenance issues you need to have with a nuclear core, the better.

All generations of past reactors were the product of teams of engineers and regulators that assured the public that they had taken into consideration all elements of failure and environmental contamination. Just because a person is totally confident in themselves doesn't mean that there was some elements that they overlooked. Most people gravitate to those who project a great deal of confidence in themselves.

Utah versatile test reactor look it up.

@Brin Jenkins Battery failure rate can be calculated and added to the storage capacity. When the batteries reach end of life they can be recycled.

Could the "Battery Storage" in "Renewables + Battery Storage" be GridReserve?

Only affects you. We are all more or less good with it...