
Open source Molten salt nuclear reactor design - iso-8859-1
https://github.com/transatomic/reactor/
======
acidburnNSA
I'm a reactor designer and I love the idea of open-source reactor design. It's
a wonderful way to add some longevity beyond typical congressional funding
cycles to these long-term reactor projects. The national labs may have 2 years
of funding on gas-cooled reactors, but then mothball those and move to sodium-
cooled reactors, and so forth. The lack of continuity is leads to lack of
momentum which leads to stagnation. People even forget stuff and have to
rediscover it years later.

Also the nuclear industry is small and struggling. Open-source may enable
collaboration on a new level that could be really exciting.

Th problem so far is that the nuclear industry is really secretive. We like to
think we have the best design, and all other designs are goofy. We like to
patent things and protect secrets. The nuclear industry started in secrecy,
developed in secrecy, and still has a lot of it.

But it's struggling so much with cheap natural gas and popular intermittent
renewables that it's kind of a do or die situation. Open source is a brilliant
step.

All that said, reactor projects don't run themselves. Transatomic shut down
and open-sourced their design. For it to go anywhere, it needs dozens of well-
funded or otherwise highly engaged people managing the project. Nuclear builds
are about as complex as projects come and simply open sourcing it won't go
far. So the next step here is for the nukes to agree on a particular open
source design, fill in a business plan, and start going. In any case it's
exciting times.

~~~
stcredzero
_The problem so far is that the nuclear industry is really secretive. We like
to think we have the best design, and all other designs are goofy. We like to
patent things and protect secrets. The nuclear industry started in secrecy,
developed in secrecy, and still has a lot of it._

This is precisely the condition much of the software industry was in, when
Stallman came up with Free Software. You could s/nuclear/software/ and the
above would have been mostly true. So maybe Open Source is what's needed here.

~~~
Cyph0n
Using open source software is nothing like building a reactor based on an open
source design...

~~~
XorNot
No but the idea of scientific journals for example is that there's a wider
science community which collaboratively iterates.

It's the same thing which has happened for engineered artifacts such as 3d
printers.

A world where the nuclear industry has a common best Practice design for each
reactor, overseen by a steering committee of experts ala the Linux kernel,
could actually lead to some progress and allow building some coherent and
verifiable narratives about safety.

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abalone
Wow, I remember lots of buzz on HN about Transatomic a few years ago and did
not realize how much they had to backtrack on their initial claims:

\- From 75X electricity per ton of uranium all the way down to 2X

\- No longer re-using spent fuel

What happened? And are the competing startups using molten salt doing any
better?

~~~
DennisP
Transatomic claimed to get as much energy from uranium as a fast reactor,
without actually being a fast reactor. I never understood how that could be
possible and wasn't surprised when it turned out it wasn't.

Other MSR startups are doing fine. Elysium, Moltex, and Terrapower's MSR
actually are fast reactors. Terrestrial Energy and Thorcon aren't making those
claims in the first place. Terrestrial Energy especially is making great
progress with regulators.

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agumonkey
I chuckled at that thought of `git clone energy`

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pjc50
Could someone look up what material is being used for the molten salt plumbing
itself please? I believe corrosion of these is one of the key issues that's so
far prevented their viability.

~~~
sgc
There are a number of molten salt solar concentrators in operation. I think
materials science has overcome the hurdle.

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m0llusk
This could be a good start, but it also seems to be lacking in some critical
areas. Existing molten salt reactors have found the molten salt to be more
corrosive than expected. This means that components in contact with the flow
of molten salt may need extensive engineering for safe operations. Given the
history of unexpected leaks it seems there also need to be precautions to
avoid and limit leaks and also to respond to leaks when they do occur. On top
of all of this one of the subtle problems with nuclear power is the sheer
amount of precautions that need to be taken for reasonably safe operation
begin to eat away at the efficiency of the whole operation. Just how efficient
such a reactor might be over its operational lifetime is an extremely
important question that is also not addressed yet.

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baybal2
Looks quite expensive for me, what it does better than basic BWR on small
side, and basic PWR on large side?

~~~
pariahHN
Not an expert, but one of the big benefits of molten salt reactors is that
they aren't really under pressure - no big poof if containment is breached.

It's also really easy to halt meltdowns - since the fuel and coolant are a big
liquid glob, you can have thermal plugs that will melt above a certain
temperature and drain the coolant+fuel into tubes small enough that, even when
the small tubes are full, the coolant+fuel in the tubes is below critical mass
and the reaction stops. It fails safe and is immune to mechanical failure,
unlike control rods in current reactor designs that have to be moved in and
out.

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
It’s a good system, but the main problem comes from the same source, the fact
that you’re dealing with a pool of molten salt. Maintenance on a reactor
vessel is never without challenges, but the problems with servicing a molten
salt (or something like a Pb-Bi eutectic) are still a financial and practical
roadblock to widespread adoption.

~~~
Blackthorn
This more than anything else is likely the biggest reason these reactors never
took off, they're certainly safer from meltdowns, but now instead of piping
water we have to pipe an incredibly caustic molten salt! The challenge hasn't
gone away, it's just shifted.

~~~
Gibbon1
I remember reading about issues with storage of the waste from a molten salt
reactor. A problem discovered was the radiation was producing fluorine gas
from the metal fluorides.

~~~
DennisP
Not all MSRs use fluoride salts. At least three companies are working on fast
reactors using chloride salts.

~~~
XMPPwocky
I'd prefer superheated chlorine gas to superheated fluorine gas, in the same
sense that I'd rather have an angry weasel in my pants than a grizzly bear,
but...

~~~
DennisP
It's not superheated if it's just slow emissions from waste, as mentioned
above.

A pipe leak in the reactor itself doesn't create a lot of gas. It's molten
salt at atmospheric pressure. It drips out and solidifies as it cools. An
advantage of MSRs is that the troublesome fission products (like iodine,
cesium, and strontium) don't leak out as gases, like they do from conventional
reactor cores; instead they are chemically bound in the salt.

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
That’s both an upside (as you’ve described), and a downside because the
already challenging environment of molten salt becomes increasingly
radioactive making servicing even harder than the chemical and thermal
environment of the salt make it. You also have to carefully monitor the salt,
and a lot of the probes and other means of monitoring it tend to rapidly
degrade in the molten salt.

It’s another issue that feels like the answer involves new materials that have
a much longer life in situ, so that the inevitable maintence is infrequent.
It’s a very promising technology, but it isn’t mature yet.

~~~
DennisP
Reactor design can also mitigate these problems.

Terrestrial Energy and Thorcon use small sealed reactor cores that get
replaced every few years.

Moltex uses a pool design, where everything is immersed from above in a pool
of coolant salt, and can be pulled out and replaced as necessary. The actual
fuel is isolated in vertical rods.

At least three companies use chloride salts. According to a presenter from
Elysium, in the absence of water the chloride salt is less corrosive to
stainless steel than water is.

I certainly agree that the technology isn't mature, since we don't have any
production reactors yet. But we're making good progress, especially in Canada
where regulation of new nuclear technology is more rational than in the U.S.

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
Canada is such an amazing contrast to the US in that area, true. I wish people
here had a better understand of just how necessary nuclear power is if we want
to survive to ever reach the hoped-for “clean energy future.”

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rpeden
Do they accept pull requests?

~~~
k__
Only if your changes are atomic.

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phit_
context: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/transatomic-
to-...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/transatomic-to-shutter-
its-nuclear-reactor-plans-make-its-technology-public)

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vortico
I imagine this isn't compatible with this open-source license.
[https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause-No-Nuclear-
License.ht...](https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause-No-Nuclear-License.html)

~~~
slavik81
That's not an open source license. The 6th defining criteria of an open source
license is "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor."
([https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd))

~~~
vortico
You're absolutely correct. Looks like the SPDX license list contains nonfree
licenses as well.

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HillaryBriss
i'm gonna get a used Mac Pro on Ebay, gut it and build one of these inside

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wolfv
from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatomic_Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatomic_Power)

In 2018 the company announced that it would be winding down and open source
its intellectual property.[5] The company discovered that in 2016 it had made
errors in its early analysis and realised that the design couldn't consume
nuclear waste. [6]

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peter_retief
Brilliant idea, I hope your concept flies. Surely its time for real open
science to prosper and the pseudo nonsense science to get restricted to
political narratives

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senectus1
how liquid is molten salt?

~~~
jws
If I’m reading the charts right in
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.7343.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.7343.pdf) the
the salts they are documenting are in the range of whole milk, cold water, and
hot water. But there is no better than a 50-50 chance that I’m interpreting
that correctly.

~~~
johnNash05
Can you send me this as an image file as I am unable to open PDF for some
reason. You can use this converter:
[https://www.coolutils.com/TotalPDFConverter](https://www.coolutils.com/TotalPDFConverter)

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snow_mac
Don't let the North Koreans or Iranians or any other bad actors see this... It
will be nukes for every madman in the world

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chinathrow
So it's open source but patent encumbered? How well does that go together?

~~~
colechristensen
A basic intent of patents _is_ the "open sourcing" of design. You get a
limited-time monopoly on your invention in exchange for publicly publishing
how it works so others can use it when your patent expires (or before then
others can use it by coming to a licensing agreement).

There could be a movement to give patents a much better name and work as
intended for the public good, unlikely as it sounds.

~~~
kragen
This is based on a casual misunderstanding of the meaning of the term "open
source". It does not merely mean, as the name suggests, that the source code
is available; rather, it means that fairly broad rights to study, use, copy,
and modify the source code are granted to the general public. You can correct
your misunderstanding by reading the Open Source Definition, written by the
group of people who coined the term "open source," immediately after they
coined it, to clarify what they meant:
[https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd)

Patents, on the contrary, specifically _deprive_ the general public of rights
they otherwise enjoy, granting a monopoly on them to the "inventor" (or rather
the assignee), in exchange, as you note, for publication. They do, as you say,
have one thing in common with open source, but in their principal
characteristics, they are precisely the opposite of open source, both in
theory and in practice.

~~~
colechristensen
The OSI doesn't get to own the definition of _open source_ regardless if they
were involved in the initial usage of it. It is clear we mean different things
as we use term and arguing about what it _should_ mean is pointless.

Patents and "open source" (whatever your definition) share some goals.
Specifically, to get design details published in a way accessible to the
public. Both patents and OSI Open Source restrict freedoms, but in different
ways.

~~~
kragen
The OSI has had to deal with charlatans attempting to co-opt the term "open
source" since its inception, using dishonest arguments like the one you are
deploying here; this is no different from trying to sell water with chalk dust
as "milk" or gold-plated tungsten as "gold". It is possible that what you are
doing falls within the ambit of US federal fraud statutes, depending on
whether you are in a position to receive money for it. However, the Hacker
News readershp is savvy enough to understand the difference; here, you have
failed and you will continue to fail.

Aside from the issue of passing off whatever sad scam you're wanting to pass
off as "open source" in order to take advantage of the goodwill earned by
genuine open source, it is entirely and transparently false to claim that "OSI
Open Source restrict[s] freedoms." Copyright, patent, and trade secret laws
restrict freedoms; open source just gives some of them back.

~~~
samatman
> Copyright, patent, and trade secret laws restrict freedoms; open source just
> gives some of them back.

I can't say this is 100% true.

OSI licenses divide into two camps, usually called "permissive" and
"copyleft". Even permissive licenses usually restrict the freedom to publish
the source without the author's name, which is, while trivial, a restriction
nonetheless.

But copyleft licenses restrict the ability to modify the source without
publishing your modifications. This is indeed a significant restriction of
freedom, and why the BSD/MIT/etc camp are called "permissive", because
copyleft is less permissive.

I prefer the permissive licenses for this very reason, although I'm not
opposed to using or contributing to GPL-licensed code.

Now, you may say that the freedom hereby restricted is justly restricted, as
we justly restrict the freedom to, say, put chalk in milk. I find it more
consistent to reject the restrictions of copyright entirely rather than
exploit them to force sharing; after all, the only way to _use_ the clause in
GPL requiring source sharing is to pursue satisfaction through the court
system.

One thing on which I'm sure we can agree: both of these camps are producing
open source software, and 'source available' is an entirely separate state of
affairs which cannot be included.

~~~
kragen
Copyright laws are what restrict the freedom to publish the source without the
author's name or to copy or modify the source. Open-source licenses give some
of those freedoms back, but, in some cases, not all of them.

~~~
samatman
You're quibbling.

Everything following the word "provided" in GPLv3 limits user freedoms.

Maybe you should care less about being "right" and more about understanding
your interlocutors. In this instance you haven't achieved either goal.

~~~
kragen
Sam, knock it off.

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DanCarvajal
I totally read the title as "Morton Salt".

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thomas
My brain read “Malden salt reactor”

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paulcnichols
I think this a great example of why the “great filter” is ahead of us. Our
quest for knowledge seems to grow faster than the dampening of our urge for
violence.

