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 MOLTEN SALT REACTORS, Chapter 9, Page 2:  Fast-Tracking The Next Prototype MSR On A Slow Boat From China
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Prototype Testing Barge
Fast-tracking MSR development on a slow boat from China.
 The "Proof-of-Performance" EBASCO Reactor Cell Barge
(Fast-Tracking development in the olden days of slide-rules was more cavalier.  Build it, then test run it from behind a nearby wall.  If it doesn't blow up, you're in.)
(Have you noticed we haven't put anyone on the Moon since we've become addicted to computers?)

Note: A single fluid molten salt reactor emulator might be possible substituting the graphite rods with steam tubes heated by a package boiler.

The Chinese have a formal thorium MSR program at the Chinese Academy of Sciences University (their equivalent to MIT).
Hire Dr. D. L. as consultant, K. S. as engineer, show up at CAS with a barge full of cash and a pad of purchase orders.

Let me be completely up-front about this particular brainstorm.
If the United States government wasn't so nuclear dysfunctional, this scheme would never have occurred to me. 
By building a 100 megaWatt (thermal) size development reactor (about 10 times the size of ORNL's experimental Molten Salt Reactor) in a full-size EBASCO confinement cell on a barge, it can be built legally anywhere in the world.  Then it can be taken to some extremely isolated unpopulated island owned by some nuclear-friendly small country (there are over 200 countries), fueled with uranium-235 (for simplicity) and run through whatever tests are dreamed up.  Something like operating a ship under a "Flag of Convenience." 

Even if you plan to never have fissile material within U.S. jurisdictions, be certain that whatever you do meets 10 CFR PART 810.3 Ch. III (1–1–08 or later edition). Get paperwork that confirms that you have reviewed and confirmed all your fissile material plans with the proper authorities of U.S., whatever foreign jurisdictions you will be working with, and the IAEA.  Nobody likes people who are being secretive about their fissile materials activities.

 

Molten Salt Reactor Simulator   A molten salt reactor simulator, using electric Calrods for core heat instead of nuclear fuel, done in the spirit of NuScale and mPower, should be the first order of business.  Picking up where the ORNL Molten Salt Experiment reactor left off, but of the same size and using modern materials, with both primary and secondary cooling loops.

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/NAT_MSREexperience.pdf  Experience with the Molten-Salt Reactor experiment.  Haubenrich and Engel, 19 page pdf
http://energyfromthorium.com/forum/download/file.php?id=988&sid...  Stability Analysis of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment.  SJBall, TWKerlin  51 page pdf
Barge - Sub-Seabed Waste Solution - 96.10.pdf   If the remote testing of the prototype reactor mounted on the barge goes terribly wrong.
Barge - Seabed Disposal of High-level Radioactive Waste .pdf  If the remote testing of the prototype reactor mounted on the barge goes terribly wrong.
MSR - Denatured - CNSLeBlanc2010revised.pdf  Since the barge will be on the high seas, there will always be the remote possibility it will be stolen by pirates or environmentalists.  By using more expensive denatured fuel instead of thorium for the tests, if the barge is taken the fuel will be virtually useless to even advanced countries.
 

100 megaWatt (thermal) Prototype Reactor   With today's space-age telemetry technology, a distant and upwind "Mother Ship" could manipulate and monitor the unmanned reactor far better than the original 1950's and 1960's "Hands On" tests that were done so long ago on the original MSR reactors at Oak Ridge National Laboratories.  After it is known for certain all is safe under all conditions, it is suggested a "Galena-like" offer be made to one of the host country's isolated populated islands to supply free electricity from the reactor barge for the next 10 to 30 years for long-term operational observations.  The 20 megaWatt (electrical) Stirling turbogenerator is a substantial amount of electricity for some small town and would make an excellent long-term fluctuating test load for the reactor.  Real-time monitoring (and supervised circuit shut-down controls) via satellite links would be easy.

 

This will be the molten salt reactor's modern "Pathfinder."
The first time you build something is when you make completely detailed plans - down to the last screw and wire connector. 
Errors caught in the planning stage are usually 1,000 times cheaper to fix than errors caught in the field.
Systems built to nuclear navy standards are always more rugged than when built to land only standards, i.e., corrosion, flexing, thermal stress, etc.
This particular EBASCO cell barge will be isolated for long periods of time during proof-of-performance testing and so must provide oil platform-like living quarters.

                                                      Contents of this page
  1) Specifications  All electrical 220V, 50 Hz.
  2) Ancillary Equipment
  3) Designing, Building, Testing
  4) Designing
  5) The Panamax Ocean-Going Barge 
 6) Rooms
 7) Supplies (L)
      Fuel Salt
      Secondary Salt or Clear Salt
      Thorium
 8) Externally Heated Turbine (Top Deck)
  9) Cost Estimate
10) Construction
       Equipment Suppliers
11) Testing
       Reactor Simulation Boiler
       Operating tests at uninhabited remote South Pacific island
12) Post Testing Trial Service 
 13) Russian Nuclear Barges

http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/12/27/bonometti-teac3/  Lessons Learned Lecture: 
Lesson Learned # 1   Lesson Learned # 2   Lesson Learned # 3   Lesson Learned # 4   Lesson Learned # 5  
Lesson Learned # 6   Lesson Learned # 7   Lesson Learned # 8   Lesson Learned # 9

 

Specifications  All electrical 220V, 50 Hz.
Ancillary Equipment
Designing, Building, Testing
Designing
 The Panamax Ocean-Going Barge 
   100' w, 300' l, 40' h 30,000 sq ft per deck, 70,000 total
 Barge Equipment Room (U)
    Bilge Pump Panel (BER)
    Bilge Pumps (L)
   Bilge Pump Disconnects (L)
   Barge Lighting Panel (BER)
   Barge Emergency Electrical Panel (BER)
   Float Switch Panel (BER)
 Rooms
   Control Room (U)
   Electrical Room (U)
   Instrumentation Room (U)
   Maintenance Shop (U)
   Toilet, Shower, Locker Room (2) (U)
   Lounge - Conference Room (U)
   Sleeping Quarters (4)
   Office Room (U)
   Diesel Engine Room (L)
   Salt Storage Room (L)
   Thorium Storage Room (L)
   General Storage Rooms (U)
   Diesel Fuel Storage Room (L)
   Lift Shaft

Environmental Systems
   Heating
   Cooling
 Hot Room (U)
   Radiation Proof Viewer
   Manipulator
   Fuel Blender
Reactor Confinement Cell for up to 1,000 mW electrical or 2,500 mW thermal
   Cell Walls and Roof
   Roof Penetration Sleeves
   Wall Penetration Sleeves
 Reactors, 100 mW Thermal, 1,000 mW electrical
   Reactor Tank
   Graphite Core  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_graphite  Conventional Graphite is about $15 per pound.
   Control Rod System
   Package Heater - Diesel Fuel
Heat Exchangers
   Primary to Secondary (2)
   Idle Heat Exchanger
   Fuel Salt Drain Tank   Heat Exchanger coolant:  http://www.radcoind.com/mk1prop.html    http://www.dow.com/heattrans/prod/synthetic/syltherm.htm 
   Confinement Cell Passive Cooling System
Circulation Pumps
   Primary Cooling Loop (Fuel Salt) Pumps (2)
   Secondary Cooling Loop (Clear Salt) (1)
Fission Gas Handler
Drain Tanks (L)
   Freeze Plug System
   Drain Tank Pump System
   Diesel Fired Package Heaters for Drain Tanks
   Fuel Salt Drain Tank
   Clear Salt Drain Tank
   Leak Tank
Electrical System
   Circulating Pump Feeder Panel
   Circulating Pump Disconnects
   Nichrome Tracing System Panel
   Emergency Electrical Panel
   Lighting Panel
   Diesel Generators (2)
   Diesel Fuel Storage Tank
Instrumentation
   Local Control Panel
   Thermocouples
   Telemetry
Communication Systems
   Telephone
   Radio
   Satellite Link
   PA System
   Intercom
Life Safety Systems
   Fire Alarm
   Sprinkler System
   Fire Pumps
   Life Raft (4)
   Helicopter Pad
Inerting System (L)
   Pressure Regulators (2)
   Pressure Sensors (5)
   Gas Storage Tanks (2)
Water System
   Reverse Osmosis Desalinator
   Potable Water Storage Tank
   Pressurization Pump and Tank
   Sewage Holding Tank
   Refrigerated Drinking Fountain
Galley
   Range
   Food Storage Room
   Freezer Locker
   Refrigerator
Supplies (L)  Make sure you know exactly how everything was made, everything that ever touched the equipment, pipes, and storage tanks.
   Fuel Salt
   Secondary Salt or Clear Salt
   Thorium
Externally Heated Turbine (Top Deck)
   Control Panel (Control Room)
   Transmission Instrument Panel (Control Room)
   Main Transmission Breaker (Top Deck)
Cost Estimate
Construction
   Equipment Suppliers
Testing
   Reactor Simulation Boiler
   Operating tests at uninhabited remote South Pacific island
Post Testing Trial Service 

Russian Nuclear Barges

________________________________________________________________________________________

Specifications

(Following copied from "Restarting America's Liquid Reactor Technology" page.)

(Below) It strikes me that the next logical step up might be a 100 megaWatt (thermal) unit in EBASCO's 2,500 megaWatt (thermal) confinement cell with 2 fuel salt circulating pumps and 2 100 megaWatt (thermal) heat exchangers, each with its own clear salt circulating pump and independent heat sink.  The oversize cell will give us a break in the heat department and dual 100 mWt pump/heat exchanger systems will give us 100% redundancy in cooling capabilities.  Heat sinking is one thing you don't cheap out on when fooling around with nuclear reactors.

The turbine's 25MVA generator should be 2Pole, 50Hz, 6.3KV.  The barge generally should be 220 Volts, 50Hz.

Ancillary Equipment

Drain tank heaters would have to be propane gas. 
There would have to be a pair of fairly large diesel generators aboard for the circulating pumps, etc.
The two dummy load water heat exchangers would not need to be made of Hastelloy-N.  The MSRE consumed 200,000 pounds of Hastelloy-N, this project should come in at well below 300,000 pounds.
The test load combustion turbine would be a 25 megaWatt unit with its combustors replaced with Hastelloy-N molten salt heat exchangers.
Here's a company who is advertising to do the job.  http://www.cpsag.ch/power-generation/advanced-product-development/conversion-to-external-firing 
This Australian company is making small external combustion turbines:  http://www.btola.com/ 

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Designing, building and testing the molten salt reactor prototype.   Designing

 

Below is the reactor-barge, to the right is the 70 foot by 50 foot high 1,000 megaWatt molten salt converter reactor (tank in center of the cylindrical confinement cell, surrounded by 4 fuel salt circulating pumps - 2 shown, motors in the cool above the cell's ceiling - and 4 fuel salt-to-clear salt heat exchangers) as described in the report above.

While the author has been a control system project engineer for most of his career, he has never taken on anything close to this.

Tempering the Author's thinking is a whiff of "Cargo Cult" enthusiasm often present in presentations by thorium advocates.  Over the years I've seen this same sort of enthusiasm cause even IBM to stumble.  It ain't pretty when you are a member of the project team. 

The hard fact is that only one clear-cut molten salt reactor has ever been built (an 8 megaWatt (thermal) air-cooled unit that was powered for a short while on thorium) and run in the United States.  It never produced a single Watt of electricity.  But it also never produced any nasty surprises over its 5-year run with both uranium and thorium as fuels. MSRE experience report (pdf)

While the EBASCO report was done by "A" list engineering companies under contract to Oak Ridge Laboratories, the fact is the plant was never built so we'll never know for sure if they got it "right enough."

The heat and corrosiveness of this reactor is daunting.  At 1,300°F it runs so hot you can take a photograph of it in the dark without a flash.  Thorium, which gets  converted into uranium-233, can have one of its neutrons knocked off later, producing uranium-232, which then produces an especially dangerous form of gamma radiation when it decays.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratories 1965 to 1970 "Molten Salt Reactor Experiment" reactor was 8 megaWatts (thermal).  The EBASCO design shown above is for a 2,500 megaWatt (thermal), 1,000 megaWatt (electrical) power station.  A 312-fold jump in thermal power beyond what is proven, far too large to be attempted in a single step.  The proposed "Proof of Performance Prototype" is 100 megaWatts (thermal), a twelve-fold increase in size.  If there are no nasty surprises in the prototype, the ten-fold step up from the prototype to EBASCO's design would be reasonable.

 

 

http://www.flowserve.com/Products/Pumps/Vertical/Wet-Pit/Molten-Salt-VTP-Pump%2Cen_US  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Right)  Decide on the power you want and the chart at right shows the diameter the core needs to to be to last the number of years you want power (up to 30 years max). (From Moir-Teller)    - -   Then cut the "I" beams in the reactor cell to fit.

The prototype molten salt reactor would have a 30-year core diameter of about 3 meters (9 1/4 feet).  The inside diameter of the EBASCO confinement cell is about 66 feet so there will be plenty of elbow room for the two heat exchangers and associated pumps and piping.

(Below) You can compute the size and flow rates of the cooling loops from the table below.  NOTE: The table is for 1,000 megaWatts THERMAL !
(From Forsberg)

________________________________________________________________________________________

The Panamax Ocean-Going Barge

Panamax Ocean-Going Barge
PANAMAX: The maximum dimensions allowed for a ship transiting the Panama canal are:
  • Length: 965 ft (294.13 m)
  • Beam (width): 106 ft (32.31 m)
  • Draft: 39.5 ft (12.04 m) in tropical fresh water (the salinity and temperature of water affect its density, and hence how deep a ship will float in the water)
  • Air draft: 190 ft (57.91 m) measured from the waterline to the vessel's highest point

A Panamax cargo ship would typically have a DWT of 60,000 to 80,000 tonnes and a maximum cargo intake of 52,500 tonnes.

Smaller typical Seagoing Barge:  150' x 40' x 10'          965 Short Tons.

Larger typical Seagoing Barge:  210' x 60' x 13' 6"     3,050 Short Tons.    http://www.mcdonoughmarine.com/index.htm 

U.S. River Barge:  A typical large river barge measures 195 by 35 feet (59.4 m × 10.6 m), and can carry up to 1,500 short tons of cargo.  9 feet of draft is typical.

It's going to have to be Panamax wide.  The EBASCO reactor confinement cell is 70 feet Diameter by 50 feet high.  The reactor tank is about 29.9 feet in diameter, 30.8 feet tank height.  That makes it a candidate for the 106' wide, 201' long, 13.5' draft, 3,050 short ton, larger seagoing barge.  This would give about 15 feet of clearance between the barge's 3 foot thick walls and the outside of the cell's wall.

http://www.atomicinsights.com/aug96/Conventional.html  Power Barges: Tools for Progress

Saint Lawrence Seaway Seawaymax  (From various Wikipedia articles.)

The southern terminus of the Welland Canal on Lake Erie, located at Port Colborne, is 99.5 meters (326.5 feet) higher than the northern terminus of the Canal at Port Weller on Lake Ontario. This canal includes eight ship locks, each of which is 24.4 meters (80 feet) wide by 233.5 meters (766 feet) long.

The Poe Lock, re-built in 1968, after the Saint Lawrence Seaway had opened. It is 1,200 feet (366 m) long, 110 feet (34 m) wide, and 32 feet (10 m) deep. It can take ships carrying 72,000 tons of cargo. The Poe is the only lock that can handle the large lakers used on the upper lakes. The original Poe Lock was engineered by Orlando Poe and, at 800 feet long and 100 feet wide (244 x 30 m), was the largest in the world when completed in 1896.
The size of vessels that can traverse the seaway is limited by the size of locks. Locks on the St. Lawrence and on the Welland Canal are 766 ft (233.5 m) long, 80 ft (24.4 m) wide, and 30 ft (9.14 m) deep. The maximum allowed vessel size is slightly smaller: 740 ft (225.6 m) long, 78 ft (23.8 m) wide, and 26.5 ft (8.1 m) deep; many vessels designed for use on the Great Lakes following the opening of the seaway were built to the maximum size permissible by the locks, known informally as Seawaymax or Seaway-Max. Large vessels of the lake freighter fleet are built on the lakes and cannot travel downstream beyond the Welland Canal. On the remaining Great Lakes, these ships are constrained only by the largest lock on the Great Lakes Waterway, the Poe Lock at the Soo Locks, which is 1,200 ft (365.8 m) long, 110 ft (33.5 m) wide and 32 ft (9.8 m) deep.

A vessel's draft is another obstacle to passage on the seaway, particularly in connecting waterways such as the St. Lawrence River. The depth in the channels of the seaway is 41 ft (12.5 m) (Panamax-depth) downstream of Quebec City, 35 ft (10.7 m) between Quebec City and Deschaillons, 37 ft (11.3 m) to Montreal, and 27 ft (8.2 m) upstream of Montreal. Channel depths and limited lock sizes mean that only 10% of ocean-going ships can traverse the entire seaway.

Mississippi Barges

What is the size of a barge?
The standard barge is 195 feet long, 35 feet wide, and can be used to a 9-foot draft. Its capacity is 1500 tons. Some of the newer barges today are 290 feet by 50 feet, double the capacity of earlier barges.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Rooms


   Control Room
   Electrical Room
   Instrumentation Room
   Maintenance Shop
   Toilet, Shower, Locker Room
   Lounge - Conference Room
   Office Room
   Diesel Engine Room
   Salt Storage Room
   Thorium Storage Room
   General Storage Rooms
   Diesel Fuel Storage Room

________________________________________________________________________________________

Supplies

The Salts

The Salts are fluorides of light metals - lithium and beryllium - commonly called FLiBe (2LiF-BeF2). 
http://www.dow.com/heattrans/prod/synthetic/dowtherm.htm  Dowtherm "A" (15 to 400°C) might be considered a test stand-in for FLiBe for early heat exchanger experiments.

FLiBe is a mixture of lithium fluoride (LiF) and beryllium fluoride (BeF2). As a molten salt it is proposed as a nuclear reactor coolant, and two different mixtures were used in the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment.

1. The 2:1 mixture with proportions Li2BeF4 has a melting point of 459°C (858°F), a boiling point of 1430°C (2610°F), and a density of 1.94 g/cm3. Its heat capacity is 4540 kJ/m3, which is similar to that of water, more than four times that of sodium, and more than 200 times that of helium (at typical reactor conditions).

2. The eutectic mixture is slightly greater than 50% BeF2 and has a melting point of 360°C (680°F). - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiBe   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity

The fuel for the MSRE was LiF-BeF2-ZrF4-UF4 (65-30-5-0.1), the graphite core moderated it, and its secondary coolant was FLiBe (2LiF-BeF2), it operated as hot as 650 °C (1,200°F) and operated for the equivalent of about 1.5 years of full power operation."    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiBe    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_fluoride   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium_fluoride    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirconium_fluoride    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tetrafluoride 

In the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment it served as solvent for the fissile and fertile material fluoride salts, as well as moderator and coolant. Different mixtures were used in the two cooling circuits.

Some other designs (sometimes called molten-salt cooled reactors) use it as coolant, but have conventional solid nuclear fuel (i.e., TRISO pebbles) instead of dissolving it in the molten salt.

ORNL has 2400 kg of Flibe. He estimates that Flibe costs somewhere between $45 and $125 per kg.   ( www.fusion.ucla.edu/apex/meeting5/summary5.pdf-  )

Another, commercially available, heat transfer salt is "HITEC."  It was suggested for use in the third loop of the EBASCO-designed supercritical steam power plant.
 

Several issues touched on in the LFTR forum's cost thread invite Nuclear Green posts, but one by Chemical Engineer Kim L Johnson
( http://fluorine.sites.acs.org/apps/profile/58116851/ )    MSR - Johnson, Kim L - Fluorine Chemistry - 760.jpg  is down right pregnant.  Johnson writes, "I'm a chemical engineer who has been working to develop industrial Fluorides for many years and have assembled lots of online documentation for the benefit of Lftr and the like.   If you have any significant interest in Fluorides, structural materials for Fs and in which forms of whatever elements are best for the Lftr bath & containment, I would be happy to send you lots of link.  Sadly however, I can no longer post important details Freely.  Serious Foreign competition could very well, in a few years' time, leave the US so far behind in our own Fluoride-Energy tech we'd never recover economically.  Fortunately, the very successful efforts of TEA & other "T Com" leaders -- fruit we shall soon see in the Senate & elsewhere -- should shortly enable guys like you, (hopefully) Lars, and many others to develop Thorium-enabled technologies full time (*just* getting off the phone with this effort's champion) !"

via NuclearGreen - Charles Barton 9/2/11

Sherrell Greene on Liquid Chloride Reactors   Saturday, November 19, 2011

The third part of my interview Q&A with Sherrell Green focused on questions concerning the future of nuclear technology. My father had been a pioneer in research on Liquid Chloride Reactor technology in the 1950's. Sherrell Greene mention LCR development during out preinterview, so I wanted to ask him some follow up questions. The LCR is a potential competitor to the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor, but it is not clear if itsadvantages would out wight its potential costs. Sherrell notes that,

The environment in today’s nuclear energy enterprise is hostile to innovation.

This is undoubtedly the case, and the consequence of our unwillingness to take risks on new concepts in nuclear power are ominous. for our country are ominous. Continuing a business as usual pattern is likely to bring national economic and environmental failure, but it is not clear what it is we should be doing.

34. Do any Liquid Chloride Salt formulas hold potential advantages in comparison to Flibe (The lithium fluoride (LiF) and beryllium fluoride (BeF2) mixture, often referred to as the preferred carrier/coolant salt formula for MSRs?
Most of the chloride-based salts don’t perform well in the thermal spectrum. Corrosion management is more demanding than the fluoride salts. LiF-BeF2 (FLiBe) mixtures are very attractive from the nuclear, thermal, chemical, and thermo-mechanical standpoint. But with you have a tritium production issue, a lithium enrichment cost issue, and a beryllium occupational exposure issue to deal with. All of that drives up the cost. George Flanagan and David Holcomb at ORNL have recently evaluated some of these issues. They conducted an initial screening of LCR salt options, and developed a pre-pre- conceptual concept for a LCR. MIT and a few others have also done work in this area.

35. Do any Liquid Chloride Salt formulas have the potential of being technically competitive with Flibe, but at a lower cost?
Again, I think you will want to consider chloride salts for harder-spectrum systems. So it’s a different application. That’s said, I don’t think we know enough to answer the question. I am pessimistic there is a chloride salt that can match FLiBe from an integrated performance perspective.

via NuclearGreen - Charles Barton

Fuel Salt


Secondary Salt or Clear Salt

(No tertiary salt such as HITEC should be needed in this application.)


Thorium

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Externally Heated Turbine

The table above gives an idea as to the range of temperature expected from non-intercooled, non-reheat, single shaft turbine engines. The centrifugal compressor has an isentropic efficiency of 80% and a pressure ratio of 4 to 1 while the axial-flow turbine has an isentropic efficiency of 85% and a pressure ratio of 3.8 to 1. Ambient air temperature is specified at 32-degrees C or 90-degrees while the compressor outlet temperature has been calculated at 424-degrees F. The part-load fan and combustion induction fan are specified at pressure ratios of up to 1.1 to 1.

The range of combustion temperatures reflects the range of fuel being used, from gasified biomass having high moisture content to anthracite coal. Gasified coal typically combusts near 2100-deg F.

 

The X211, also known as the J87, was a nuclear-powered turbojet engine designed to power the proposed WS-125 long-range bomber. The program was started in 1955 in conjunction with Convair for a joint engine/airframe proposal for the WS-125. It was one of two nuclear-powered gas turbine projects undertaken by GE, the other one being the X39 project.

The X211 was a relatively large turbojet engine of straight conventional layout, save for the combustion chamber being replaced with a heat exchanger. It featured variable-stator compressors and an afterburner. A single nuclear reactor was intended to supply heat to two X211 engines.

http://www.poweronsite.org/   Cogeneration Association
http://www.energysolutionscenter.org/  Gas Association - GE has some interesting turbines - organic, etc.
http://www.poweronsite.org/Tutorial/CombTurbine.htm#Overview  Good paper, good source.
http://www.ecotera.com/tec.htm  External combustion turbines.
http://www.btola.com/ 

Creative Power Solutions - Brent Gregory, President   Title President at Creative Power Solutions  Demographic info Phoenix, Arizona Area | Utilities  Current: Partner at Creative Power Solutions, President at Creative Power Solutions (USA)  Past: Consulting at Siemens Energy, Senior Staff Engineer at GE Energy, Manager at GE  Education: Rolls-Royce - Engineering Apprenticeship  Summary: Engineering Manager

Creative Power Solutions (Usa), Inc in Scottsdale, AZ is a private company categorized under Turbines Manufacturers. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of $470,000 and employs a staff of approximately 3. Companies like Creative Power Solutions (Usa), Inc usually offer: Olympian Generator Sets, Motor Generator Sets, Capstone Turbine, Steam Turbine Generator Set and The Partisan Turbine.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Cost Estimate

Order of Magnitude Cost Estimate:  The author knows of several consulting engineering firms that may be willing to take on such a task and several nuclear energy consultants that may be willing to share their thorium-fueled Molten Salt Reactor knowledge.  Neither are inexpensive, but this is the moment where many securable innovative ideas occur.  In light of the unique international nature of this endeavor, both the engineers and the nuclear consultants - along with their previous works - will have to be extensively vetted.  Corrosion is still a concern, so expertise in corrosion would be a plus.

Scope: As a preliminary engineering investigation for the coal2nuclear reactor barge concept the author is advocating, the reactor and steam generators from this 1962 design will be extracted and used as rough design and preliminary cost templates.

Once this is complete, a realistic preliminary cost estimate for building and installing a coal2nuclear conversion reactor can be made.

The new engineering study and preliminary drawings would be divided into six major sections:
1. The barge-mounted reactor and first salt heat exchanger.
2. The second salt heat exchanger and its building.
3. The steam generators and their building.
4. The barge's radiation confinement slab system.
 5. The barge itself.
 6. A materials list covering the initial load of salt and fuel materials.  Changes in devices, materials, and their procurement will produce a modern Model "T" reactor that will be the reactor envisioned in Dr. Ralph Moir and Dr. Edward Teller's paper. 

Connected to an existing superheated steam power plant, it will be a coal2nuclear conversion.

Model "T" reactor has an estimate for the complete plant.

Table N . l . 1000 Mwe Molten Salt Converter                     (Begins on pdf page 292)
Reactor Plant -Estimate of Capital Investment

ONE (1) 2500 MWt MOLTEN SALT REACTOR
ONE (1) 1000 MWe REHEAT TURBINE GENERATOR UNIT C.C.6F 40" L.S.B.   (2400 Psi. - 1000°F - 1000°F)

(Prices as of 11-1-62 and Based on a 40 Hour Work Week)

TOTAL CAPITAL INVESTMENT    $148,875,600                     (on pdf page 327)

To get some idea of what this sort of equipment might cost in 2011 dollars, there was a 1,000 KW diesel generator quoted at $110,000 on pdf page 326.  On the web, GoPower.com is offering a new 1000 KW Cummins Powered Generator Power Module, Model OC1000 PM for $260,000.

Extracting the relevant components from the Model "T" reactor document.

Major components:
 1. The barge-mounted reactor and its fueling system


2. First salt heat exchangers - 4


3. Second salt heat exchanger and its building.


4. Feedwater pre-heater


5. Combined evaporator and steam superheater


6. Steam reheater


7. Dump Tanks and package boiler salt heaters


8. Barge and its radiation confinement slab system
    Dump tank shields.  What about adding fixed boron rods to the dump tanks to quench decay heat?

9. Steam Generator Building

 

Major Factory Infrastructure Components:
1. Fuel salt preparation facility

 

Estimated capital costs for only the coal2nuclear equipment from the 1972 report:

Structures & Improvements
Grounds - p295                                                       501,500
Turbine Building - p299                                          2,342,600
Waste Disposal Building - p301                                165,950
Misc. Structures - p301                                             24,500
Reactor Plant Building - p304                                2,932,400   

Stacks:  Concrete Chimney - p304                             31,000

Reactor Equipment
Reactor Equipment - p306                                     8,823,300
Heat Transfer Systems - p309                              23,609,700
Fuel Handling and Storage - p310                           1,517,200
Radioactive Waste Treatment and disposal - p311      361,150
Instrumentation and Controls - p312                        1,100,000
Other Reactor Plant Equipment - p315                    3,048,500



 

Discussion:

The United Nations (UN), http://www.un.org/en/index.shtml,  is biased toward helping the poorest countries in every way they can.   The United Nations, through the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) http://www.ipcc.ch/, is doing everything it can to persuade countries to cease the production and emission of greenhouse gasses, most notably carbon dioxide.  These are the entities the author hopes to help and regards them as potential sources of guidance.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), http://www.iaea.org/,  a subdivision of the United Nations, has become the world's dominant international nuclear regulatory agency (largely as result of the world not wanting another Chernobyl).  They have become the de facto Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the world's 225 countries and are establishing a protocol to enable non-nuclear countries to take advantage of nuclear medicine, nuclear electricity, and nuclear desalination.

Try to form a relationship with http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/ .  Not a competitor in this power area, but certainly a U.S. nuclear innovator in foreign markets that also has experience working seriously with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Remain mindful you are doing this to make money, not save money.

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Construction

It is unlikely the reactor-barge would be built in the United States.  China has a formal thorium-fueled molten salt reactor program in place now and would be very likely to want to participate in the development of this prototype to learn the new construction and operational details first.

Concrete Reactor Cell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_concrete 

Concrete Barge

http://www.precastdesign.com/projects/platforms-barges.php   Yee Precast Design Group Ltd., Honolulu, Singapore

Dr. Alfred A Yee, P.E., Director, PRECAST DESIGN CONSULTANTS PTE. LTD., 315 Alexandra Road, #04-07 Sime Darby Business Centre, Singapore 159944,
+65 6735 8884 t, +65 6736 1077 f, alyee.sg@precastdesign.com

President, YEE PRECAST DESIGN GROUP LTD., 1217 Palolo Avenue, Honolulu, HI 96816 U.S.A., +1 808 733 8686 t, +1 808 737 1808 f
alyee@precastdesign.com    www.precastdesign.com

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Equipment Suppliers

http://www.qnpower.com/index.aspx  Chinese company that looks to be able to build the entire EBASCO reactor cell.  They do steam, but not gas, turbines.
http://www.qnpower.com/tech.aspx?id=477  Check out their shop floor.

http://www.bechtel.com/  Having a long history of nuclear plant engineering and construction, they are currently partnered with B&W's mPower Small Modular Reactor (SMR) power plant and can certainly provide any heavy lifting.

http://www.babcock.com/  A nuclear equipment builder, Babcock & Wilcox is as good a source of heat exchangers and steam generators as you can find.

http://www.sargentlundy.com/  One of the world's best.

http://www.kiewit.com/districts/kiewit-power/overview.aspx  Kiewit is currently partnering with NuScale Power, a small modular reactor (SMR) company.

http://www.shawgrp.com/markets/powersvcs/nuclearpower   Shaw Group.

http://www.cammell-laird.com/  British shipbuilder interested in building nuclear modules.

 http://www.nuvia.co.uk/  Cammell-Laird's nuclear partner.  Could make a good partner since they are non-U.S.

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Testing

Why only a 12 times scale-up of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment reactor - and spend so much effort to test it in the middle of nowhere - when EBASCO was looking at a 312 times scale up to be built and first run in the populated Midwest of the United States?.  Simple, as an old engineer I know there are many things I do not know I don't know.  A 12 times scale up is an order of magnitude.  If there are things to worry about I'd rather find out with a 12 times scale up than a 312 times scale up.

The fact the reactor is mounted on an ocean-going barge opens up a new paradigm for nuclear reactor testing.  The uninhabited far Southern Hemisphere comes to mind as a place where suitable and extremely remote uninhabited islands are available.

The author is a control systems engineer and is looking forward to going hog-wild with remote telemetry systems so no one needs to be within several hundred miles the the first time the key is turned.

As a model for modern reactor as done by Americans testing we have both NuScale's 45 megaWatt Small Modular Reactor and Babcock & Wilcox's 125 megaWatt "mPower" SMR unit. (SMRs have been defined by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as nuclear reactors 300 megaWatt (e) or smaller.)  Both are smaller versions of conventional reactors with a slew of new safety and convenience features.  They both run on small, half-length versions of standard reactor fuel rod bundles so the nucleonics are extremely well-known.  The modern passive safety features were not so well known so both companies built 1/3 scale models (I think) with electrical heating rods substituting for the radioactive fuel rods.  B&W's scale model reactor is still under construction.  http://www.nuscalepower.com/   http://www.babcock.com/products/modular_nuclear/ 

NuScale completed their test prototype several years ago.  They then did everything bad they could think of and watched how the reactor behaved.  As far as I know, it passed with flying colors.  As an engineer, I must say I admire the NuScale folks.  The reactor has a North-West Coast design flavor and looks like everyone involved were tree-hugging greens.  It has to be the safest conventional reactor in the world.  The bad news is that, while about the same size as B&W's mPower, the NuScale produces only about 1/3 as much power and probably will cost 2/3 as much.  NuScale are newbies in the reactor business, B&W, on the other hand, have, in association with Westinghouse, produced most of our small military reactors for more than 50 years.  It is interesting to note that Westinghouse recently announced its own SMR that looks quite a bit like the other two and has some of the safety features of both.   http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/smr/index.htm 

The molten salt Proof-of-Performance prototype reactor in this web site is a totally different animal from conventional water-cooled reactors and its nucleonics, while prototyped a couple of times and studied sporadically by several countries over the last 40 years, is virtually unknown when it comes to doing a year-in, year-out workhorse task like making electricity. 

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Post-Testing Trial Service

This idea came from Toshiba Electric.  Toshiba developed a small fast-neutron reactor they call the 4S.  It comes in 10 and 50 megaWatt (e) sizes and is designed to run unattended for 30 years.  The 4S is designed to be installed in a 90 foot deep silo and be removed and returned by barge to Japan for refueling after 30 years.  Toshiba has offered to provide Galena, Alaska, with a 10 megaWatt unit for free for thirty years.  As it so happens, the molten salt reactor in the reactor barge is supposed to go 30 years between servicing.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant 

Somewhere in the world there has to be a remote isolated ice-free seaside town - large enough to have a hospital - that is currently running on costly diesel electricity.  Since the prototype barge has a 25 megaWatt gas turbine generator mounted on it, the town could provide a realistic long-term load cycle regimen.  This would also provide a realistic support logistics setting.

Additional electrical switchgear would make the town's existing diesel generation facility available as standby and peaking capacity assuming the diesels were equipped with 50Hz line synchronization throttles.

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