Post by marchesarosa on Apr 3, 2012 20:23:10 GMT 1
The WAMSR: Too Good To Be True?
Tuesday, 03 April 2012 13:12
Transatomic Power’s Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR) can convert the high-level nuclear waste produced by conventional nuclear reactors each year into $7.1 trillion of electricity. At full deployment, WAMSR reactors could use the existing stockpiles of nuclear waste to equal satisfying the world’s electricity needs through 2083.
Two MIT PhD candidates have engineered a way to eliminate waste uranium based fuel by making electricity. Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie who are nuclear engineering PhD students at MIT, started working their idea called “Transatomic Power” back in 2010, and formed a corporation with the same name last year. Their business model is to license the design of reactors rather than build plants, a huge capital-intensive endeavor.
Here’s the lure – Transatomic Power’s Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR) can convert the high-level nuclear waste produced by conventional nuclear reactors each year into $7.1 trillion of electricity. Here’s the payoff – At full deployment, WAMSR reactors could use the existing stockpiles of nuclear waste to equal satisfying the world’s electricity needs through 2083.
A WAMSR design is a compact modular 200 MWe molten salt reactor that can be manufactured economically at a central location and transported by rail to the reactor site.
WAMSR Reactor Schematic Graphic Diagram.
Ms Dewan, who is the CEO spoke with Walter Frick at BostInno last week is quoted as saying, “We were trying to figure out what we wanted to do after we graduated,” noting that most nuclear engineering PhD’s go into academia or to work for a National Lab. “We wanted to do something exciting with nuclear, and we realized the only way we could do that is to have a startup of our own.”
These are brave young engineers. Going into nuclear reactors at this point in history isn’t a gleaming field of capital and demand – quite the opposite....
more
thegwpf.org/energy-news/5371-wamsr-too-good-to-be-true.html
Tuesday, 03 April 2012 13:12
Transatomic Power’s Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR) can convert the high-level nuclear waste produced by conventional nuclear reactors each year into $7.1 trillion of electricity. At full deployment, WAMSR reactors could use the existing stockpiles of nuclear waste to equal satisfying the world’s electricity needs through 2083.
Two MIT PhD candidates have engineered a way to eliminate waste uranium based fuel by making electricity. Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie who are nuclear engineering PhD students at MIT, started working their idea called “Transatomic Power” back in 2010, and formed a corporation with the same name last year. Their business model is to license the design of reactors rather than build plants, a huge capital-intensive endeavor.
Here’s the lure – Transatomic Power’s Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR) can convert the high-level nuclear waste produced by conventional nuclear reactors each year into $7.1 trillion of electricity. Here’s the payoff – At full deployment, WAMSR reactors could use the existing stockpiles of nuclear waste to equal satisfying the world’s electricity needs through 2083.
A WAMSR design is a compact modular 200 MWe molten salt reactor that can be manufactured economically at a central location and transported by rail to the reactor site.
WAMSR Reactor Schematic Graphic Diagram.
Ms Dewan, who is the CEO spoke with Walter Frick at BostInno last week is quoted as saying, “We were trying to figure out what we wanted to do after we graduated,” noting that most nuclear engineering PhD’s go into academia or to work for a National Lab. “We wanted to do something exciting with nuclear, and we realized the only way we could do that is to have a startup of our own.”
These are brave young engineers. Going into nuclear reactors at this point in history isn’t a gleaming field of capital and demand – quite the opposite....
more
thegwpf.org/energy-news/5371-wamsr-too-good-to-be-true.html