User:IamM1rv/thorcon

Thorcon is a project which proposed to build a modular Molten salt reactor style nuclear reactor. It is design by Martingale, Inc. of Florida in the United States of America.

Included in the proposal are licensing, testing, manufacturing, installation, licensing, operation and decommissioning. Once production is in full swing, it is expected to build 100 modules per year.

Technical
The proposed station will be rated at 1000 megawatts-electrical (MWe) and consists of four independent 250 MWe modules. These modules are lifted in and out to replace spent modules, like an ink cartridge. The Cans or cores in the design have plant thermal efficiency of 45%. According to Thorcon modeling, each Can consumes 119 kg of fissile uranium per full-power year, about half as much as a light water reactor with the same electrical output. Modern molten-salt reactor technologies could be half as expensive in terms of cost per megawatt.

The proposed Thorcon reactor design uses a mixture of sodium fluoride (NaF-BeF2-UF4(-ThF4)) and beryllium fluoride as carrier, with uranium and/or thorium fluoride salt as the fuel charge dissolved in the carrier salt. This salt is the primary coolant and fuel. The diluent reduces the viscosity and melting point, and increases the heat capacity. The fuel salt mixture is both primary coolant and fuel. See molten salt reactor and liquid fluoride thorium reactor.

Fuel and waste
Thorcon is not a breeder reactor. In stead it requires a supply of new fuel, like today's solid fueled reactors. Scientist Ralph Moir claims this process helps in the nonproliferation of nuclear materials, meaning there will be less weapons grade nuclear materials available in the world. Previously ran experiments back this opinion.

Thorcon uses replaceable, sealed, nuclear-grade stainless steel containment units called Cans. There are two silos for each operating can so that one unit can be operating while the previous, spent module can cool down for 4 years, allowing the radioactive decay of short lived radioactive elements. After this period the spent Can is removed and replaced with new Can.

Peter Karamoskos, of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons claims the waste will still be excess citing more plants producing materials with half-life's still in the hundreds of thousands to millions of years range.

Design
Thorcon is designed as a large yet modular reactor system. No online nuclear reprocessing is employed. The reactor is a converter reactor like today's solid fueled reactors. The design focus is to use existing technologies to the extent possible, in order to build a prototype design quickly. Thorcon has only one fuel salt loop. See molten salt reactor and liquid fluoride thorium reactor more details.

The top of the Silos is about 29 meters underground. The secondary salt is a mixture of sodium fluoride and beryllium fluoride. It is essentially bare fuel carrier salt, without uranium or thorium. This fuel-salt-heated secondary salt is pumped out of the top of the Primary Heat Exchanger to a Secondary Heat Exchanger. Where it transfers its heat to a mixture of sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate solar salt. The solar salt in turn transfers its heat to a steam loop, creating super critical steam, and also reheating that steam to increase the plant’s efficiency.

ThorCon uses block type construction similar to the shipyard industry. Thorcon's principal engineer and architect, and former MIT professor, Jack Devanney, claims that applying the block type construction to nuclear construction will afford the high productivity currently seen in shipyards.

A panel line manufactures smaller blocks that are the combined to large block modules. The blocks can weigh hundreds of tonnes. After assembly the blocks are dropped into place in a dock. The use of reinforced concrete, which is difficult to standardize and produce in panel lines, is minimized.





Safety
By the nature of the molten-salt reactor, you can not have a melt down or explosion like Fuji or Chernobyl. Thorcon is a walk-away safe plant design. This implies that no operator action, electricity supply, support systems, or coolant injection must be needed in the event of an accident. The Thorcon system relies heavily on inherent safety and passive safety.

As a molten salt reactor, the fuel and coolant are the same, inert, non volatile mixture. The boiling point is over 1400 °C, some 700 °C above the normal operating temperature. The salt is chemically stable up to and over the boiling point. There is very little stored energy in the system such as steam or gas pressure, and there is no potential for adverse chemical reactions such as hydrogen generation and detonation. In fact, the salt itself converts otherwise volatile fission products such as cesium, to much less volatile and chemically stable fluorides, providing an inherent chemical and physical sequestration of fission products. These physical and chemical features of the fluoride salt eliminate driving forces to push radionuclides into the environment.

The large number of containment barriers combined with an always operating passive containment cooling system, and the lack of pressure or other energetic driving forces, plus full under ground nature of the entire nuclear island would help to contain radioactivity in event of failure.

Being a simplified converter reactor, there is no fuel reprocessing equipment onsite. This avoids leaks, corrosion and other potential hazards with reprocessing equipment.



ThorCon is a simpler and smaller structure than today's large ships that are rapidly manufactured in large numbers by many shipyards in the world today.