Why Bill Gates’ New Natrium Reactor is a Big Deal

Bill Gates has financed a nuclear reactor in Wyoming that just started construction. It’s what’s known as a Natrium Reactor and uses a sodium-cooled fast reactor combined with an energy storage system. That's a lot of words, but just what does the thing do? Let’s have a look.

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[crabel]

This was my PhD dissertation. You have a few inaccuracies.
1. Long term storage is not needed. Seasonal variations in load are managed through timing power plant refueling and maintenance outages.
2. While it can absorb renewable energy fluctuation, the capital recovery of the reactor is also reduced, because the renewables require (mostly) idle backup capacity and extra storage.
3. Control rods are the primary means of reactivity control in PWRs and BWRs. We have a mantra that “reactor power follows steam demand” changing the steam demand is what causes the reactivity insertion that changes power. Boron is used to regulate the average coolant temperature, e.g. add boric acid temperature goes down (the negative reactivity from the acid causes the temperature to lower until the temperature coefficient of reactivity compensates.
4. Natrium reactor can absolutely load follow on the reactor side. It’s been a while since I looked but I remember doing reactor transient analysis on the order of 10%/second. The fuel is metallic so it’s conductive. It is also very porous (looks like Swiss cheese due to the fission product gases) and has a sodium bond inside as well. So the fuel is robust. It gets hot and the core expands rapidly inserting negative reactivity. The reactor’s average capacity factor is ~90% and does have some transients on the order of 5%/min that it can leisurely respond to. The storage slows everything down. It’s amazing.
5. The salt used in the storage system is “Solar Salt” a 60-40 Eutectic of NaNO₃ and KNO₃. It is not chloride based. The reactor can use LiCl to reprocess the used fuel on site, but that’s an entirely different topic.
Here is my work:

[msromike]

In the case of this reactor, low efficiency in certain scenarios still provides electricity with zero direct carbon emissions. The amazing thing to me is not the reactors themselves. It's why we haven't been building them for the past 20 years or so.

[michaeldiesner]

The windows joke, hahaha - you make my day Sabine! 😄

[SteveNaranjo]

At 3:05 if Sabine would have said "Not great not terrible" my mind would have exploited🤯🤯🤣🤣🤣

[chaptertravels]

You covered the thermal storage pretty well but left out some of the more interesting parts/advantages.
Natrium is a low-pressure/high-temperature reactor, this is the most important aspect of this technology.
Low-pressure means no expensive forgings and containment structures that high-pressure water reactors need. This saves a lot of money and improves safety at the same time.
High-temperature allows for thermal storage but also separates the power conversion side of the plant from the nuclear side. All the equipment is off-the-shelf stuff that doesn't need to be nuclear certified. This saves a lot of money and allows you to start construction early, like you see in the thumbnail. You can't do this with a LWR.

High-temperature along with fast neutrons means much higher efficiency and later
waste burning.

High-temperature also means cheap industrial process heat, something neither LWRs or renewables can provide. The demand for process heat is double that of electricity alone. This is a huge deal.

[connor]

"Slower with every use so I'm sure Gates is familiar with the problem" hahahahaha nice

[JamesLamb]

Windows. 😂 I finally took the plunge and saved two old computers with Ubuntu. It was easier than I expected.

[fiction]

The first rule of VPNs is that we never use the VPNs that spend all their money on advertising and which always turn up in the 10 best VPN lists while the best VPNs never appear because they haven't bribed anyone...

[infini_ryu]

"Slower with every use. So I'm sure Gates is familiar with the problem." And they say Germans don't have a sense of humour... 😂

[truerthanyouknow]

Nuclear Chill Pill sounds like a '90s cover band name.

[JNWoodworks]

I love your explanations, they have enough detail to satisfy an engineer. I also appreciate your subtle humor 🙂

[isabellakhadka]

Hi Sabina,
A few points:
-please note that this reactor uses 20% enriched fuel. No? Enriching uranium is extremely expensive, proprietary, difficult, etc . . .
-liquid sodium? Liquid salts? All of these are extreme measures, with unproven technologies. . .
- why not go with a gentle proven technology like the CANDU reactor that uses unenriched uranium, with heavy water ( D2O) as a moderator. No high pressure is generated and the reactor has the added advantage of being able to refuel while online. 
-The CANDU is a simple and elegant technology that does not use any extreme measures. These reactors have been operating and generating power for the grid in Canada for more than 40 years.
-The CANDU technology is available and since most of the patent have probably run out by now . . . These reactors can be can be online safely and cheaply in a very short time. No extreme measures, this is a workhorse technology.
-please do a show on the CANDU reactors, newcomers to nuclear energy need to be aware of the alternatives and that not everything related to nuclear energy it is difficult and dangerous and new
PS I am your fan. Thank you for the channel.

[mitchyoung]

Im surprised the German word for sodium isn't Salzstoff.

[ffsireallydontcare]

Personally I think Germany should be investigating energy produced by beer and sauerkraut. It's a renewable natural resource with explosive potential.

[parswarr]

I once worked at the Naughton Power plant. Having trees around anything in that area in the virtual visualization made me chuckle.

[davewitter]

Wyoming has a state population of 570, 000 a 10th the size of a good sized city. There are coal mines big enough to see from Commercial Airlines. There is an abundant of wind. Wyoming has the potential to produce more power than Hoover and Grand Coulee combined.

[jeremygraves]

Sabine, just wanted to say that I'm so grateful for you channel. You're doing a real public service. Thank you!

[Nanook]

The problem with liquid sodium cooled plants is they leak, and when sodium meets air or water, it burns, or produces hydrogen which explodes, not a good thing in a nuclear environment. A salt cooled reactor is much better in this respect and retains pretty much all the same advantages of sodium cooled reactors. I am happy to see fast reactors coming online though, we need to fission not store the long term actinide waste so it becomes short term fission products plus energy.

[metsfanal]

"if all goes according to plan, should be ready by 2030." Well it's a nuclear plant so that means 2040 and almost twice the price they promised, if it even gets completed at all.

Why not build a thorium reactor that the internet's been talking about for twenty years?

[kellyrobinson]

I THOUGHT Eutectic salts were involved.

I worked on a project at a little "Mom and Pop" R&D outfit in the '80s.

Plastic containers containing Eutectic salts, irregularly shaped to provide lots of surface area and accommodate surrounding airflow, were stacked outside a house. The melting/freezing points were engineered such a that the salts would phase change at certain temperatures.

For heating at night, during the day certain salts would absorb heat, and melt. At night, cold air would be blown across the containers of molten salts.The salts would phase change to solid, and the circulating air would carry the released heat it had picked up from the phase change into the house for warmth.

During the day, warm air would be directed across the containers. The salts melted, absorbing heat from the air, and the cooled air would in turn cool the house.

It worked in principle, but the salts would "wear out"; chemically break down over the course of many cycles.

If I remember correctly, the salts broke down too soon for the process to be commercially viable. The expense of replacing the salts periodically was greater than the cost of conventional heating and air conditioning. Had the salts been more robust, the system might have worked.

This is the first time since then that I have heard about these kinds of salts being used at scale for energy storage and transfer. I can only guess that new methods have been developed to enhance the working life of the salts.