User:Bordsalt/sandbox

= Seasalt (molten salt reactor) =

The Seaborg Technologies' Seasalt reactor is a generation IV molten salt nuclear fission reactor 100 MWe (100 MW electric output) prototype proposed by the Danish startup company Seaborg Technologies. The reactor uses thorium in conjunction with the spent nuclear fuel (from conventional or fast plutonium breeder nuclear reactors or even decommissioned nuclear weapons). The thorium fuel cycle produces significantly less of the long-lived and problematic transuranic waste than both a conventional reactor and a fast plutonium breeder reactor. As a consequence, the core produces much less transuranic waste than it consumes; hence, it is a waste-burner. The Seasalt reactor is designed to be walk-away safe; no active measures are required to control the reactor under abnormal circumstances hence making it a safer and more clean alternative to conventional nuclear power.

The Seasalt reactor is in its early design phase and Seaborg Technologies is focused primarily on neutronics, radiative transfer, computational fluid dynamics, and the physics of the design.

Seaborg Technologies
Seaborg Technologies is a Danish startup company working to develop and commercialize thorium-based molten salt reactors. Founded in 2015 and based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Seaborg Technologies emerged as collaboration between a small team of physicists, chemists and engineers with roots at the Niels Bohr Institute, CERN, ESS (European Spalation Source) and DTU Center of Nuclear Technologies sharing a common vision of sustainable and cheap nuclear power. Recently Seaborg Technologies has seen increased public interest in Denmark due to a political and public change in opinion toward nuclear power (see also energy in Denmark). The company takes it name after the American nuclear chemist and Nobel laureate Glenn T. Seaborg.

Application
The Seasalt reactor is mainly designed for electricity production, however, other uses such as district heating/district cooling, seawater desalination, hydrogen production etc. are also possible. Due to a high burnup, along with the fact that the reactor is fueled directly with spent nuclear fuel, the reactor is well suited for spent nuclear fuel stockpile (nuclear waste) reduction.

Reactor core
The Seasalt reactor core is a graphite-based-compound-moderator thermal reactor core. The core is designed to be slightly over-moderated to ensure negative void and temperature reactivity coefficients. The graphite is coated with a highly resistant metal alloy and corrosion is reduced by regularly circulating the flouride salt through a fluoride burner and by adding a reducing anode to the fuel salt. Swelling and corrosion of the graphite moderator is currently expected to be the limiting factor for the lifetime of the core module.