Show notes:

Coupling Integral Molten Salt Reactor Technology with Hybrid Nuclear/Renewable Energy Systems by John Kutsch for https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/

Presented at Naval Postgraduate School, Energy Academic Group, NPS Defense Energy Seminar. https://my.nps.edu/web/eag/2018-seminar-2

Terrestrial Energy USA is now working with Idaho National Laboratory to couple the IMSR to advanced industrial systems. Several systems have been designed and proposed. These can serve energy-intensive industries with stable heat and power for clean H2, O2 production, and by extension ammonia and methanol production. Desalination is also a very significant market sector for the IMSR heat and power.

IMSR has the potential to be a truly transformative energy technology, and when coupled to advanced industrial systems, IMSR enables new, truly transformative clean industries. The IMSR demonstrates that power generation systems designed explicitly for electricity generation are no longer a necessary constraint. Nuclear energy can provide new opportunities for variable renewable energy systems by allowing them to contribute to a common reservoir of thermal battery storage without stressing the grid system. The IMSR enables the idealized deep decarbonization desperately sought after by climate-conscious industrialists, such as Google-org.

In the Google.org experiment, the conclusion was finally drawn that carbon-free electricity was an exceedingly small fraction, compared to the behemoth fossil fuel power for transportation and industrial processes. The IMSR provides a new deployable system for low-cost carbon-free process heat energy, which can be used to produce a broad array of energy services, including electric power; hydrogen as an input for industrial chemicals production; steel, cement, and other primary materials; or synthetic fuels for the transportation sector. All of this can be achieved cost-competitively with fossil fuels, and at the lowest life cycle emissions rating of any power source.