Seaborg Technologies is a private Danish

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

. It is developing small

molten salt reactors A molten salt reactor (MSR) is a class of nuclear fission reactor in which the primary nuclear reactor coolant and/or the fuel is a molten salt mixture. Only two MSRs have ever operated, both research reactors in the United States. The 1950's Ai ...

. Founded in 2015 and based in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establishe ...

, Seaborg emerged as a small team of physicists, chemists, and engineers with educational roots at the

Niels Bohr Institute The Niels Bohr Institute (Danish: ''Niels Bohr Institutet'') is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, cele ...

, CERN, ESS (European Spallation Source) and DTU (Technical University of Denmark) who share a common vision of safe,

sustainable Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livin ...

and cheap

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced ...

. Seaborg Technologies is named after the American nuclear chemist and

Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ...

Glenn T. Seaborg Glenn Theodore Seaborg (; April 19, 1912February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work i ...

Compact Molten Salt Reactor

The reactor designed by Seaborg Technologies is called the Compact Molten Salt Reactor (CMSR). The company claims that it is inherently safe, significantly smaller, better for the environment, and inexpensive even compared to fossil fuel-based electricity. Conventional nuclear reactors have solid fuel rods that need constant cooling, typically using water under high pressure. Water is abundantly available but its low boiling point is a vulnerability creating a potential point of failure. In contrast, in a CMSR, fuel is mixed in a liquid salt whose boiling point is far above the temperatures produced by the fission products. This enables it to operate stably at a pressure of one atmosphere. Unlike other thermal spectrum molten salt reactors the CMSR does not use graphite as a moderator. Instead it used molten

Sodium hydroxide Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye and caustic soda, is an inorganic compound with the formula NaOH. It is a white solid ionic compound consisting of sodium cations and hydroxide anions . Sodium hydroxide is a highly caustic base and alkal ...

(NaOH) contained in pipes adjacent to and interlaced with pipes that contain the molten fuel salt. This enables a more compact design. It also allows the liquid moderator to be rapidly removed from the core as a fission control mechanism. In the case of an overheating accident, a frozen salt plug at the base of the reactor melts and the liquid fuel flows out of the reactor core away from the moderator into cooled tanks where the reaction quenches, the fuel cools and solidifies, without dispersing in the surrounding environment. The approach mitigates the danger of a failure rather than eliminating all failures.

Deployment

The company intends to deploy its

shipping container A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated boxes. In the context o ...

sized reactors on barges. Reactors are manufactured at scale in a central facility, reducing costs. Using barges makes them mobile. Single reactor output is estimated to be 200 MWe. Multiple units could be deployed on a single barge. The primary design challenge is in preventing the highly corrosive fuel slurry and moderator from damaging the reactor. The fueling cycle is 12 years. It offers no proliferation risk or military applications. A prototype is scheduled for 2025, and Seaborg Technologies hopes to have regulatory approval in 2026 and to be ready for deployment in 2027.

References

{{Reflist Nuclear reactors Technology companies based in Copenhagen Danish companies established in 2015 Companies based in Copenhagen Municipality