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To: ckilmer
There are no prototype reactors as yet except maybe in China.

Yep... The Red Chinese have nothing holding them back from development in any direction. They are also certainly working on development of, if not already operating, TWRs.

From the linked article: "In September 2015 TerraPower and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop a TWR. TerraPower planned to build a 600 MWe demonstration Plant, the TWR-P, by 2018–2022 followed by larger commercial plants of 1150 MWe in the late 2020s.[15] However, in January 2019 it was announced that the project had been abandoned due to technology transfer limitations placed by the Trump administration."

31 posted on 02/22/2021 11:06:27 AM PST by PerConPat (A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground...Mencken)
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To: PerConPat

Terra Power is bill gates venture. Its not really a gen 4 lftr company. Its closer to a gen 3 design.

The lftr designs date from the 1960’s and were done by Alvin Weinberg—head of oak ridge labratories at the time. They were moth balled along with the the working reactors in the 1979’s and rediscovered again by a nasa scientist named sorenson. He was looking for a nuclear design that could weather the hazards of space. Light water reactors won’t do that. lftr reactors will. lftr reactors won’t explode in space. So they are the correct design for mar or lunar expeditions. In order to publicize his finding —Sorenson put the designs online about 2005. In about 2010 the Chinese downloaded the old designs and started their own lftr program. I thik they have dedicated about 600 million to the program. Its something entirely seperate from their work with bill gates. sorenson currently has a company named flybe that is working with the DOE labs to develop an lftr reactor. there are three or four other companies doing the same thing.


32 posted on 02/22/2021 4:36:47 PM PST by ckilmer
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