Are any other Molten Salt Reactor builders doing anything similar?
If SpaceX had taught me anything then it is that rapid iterations on prototypes is the way to go.
If SpaceX had taught me anything then it is that rapid iterations on prototypes is the way to go.
Edit: where did I get the idea it’s 100MW from? Title talks of 1MW. That makes it a lot easier.
100MW would be a lot trickier to test due to infrastructure limitations, but you could probably figure something out with natural gas or propane burners.
But you also want to run it at reactor temperatures. I don't know what that is, but finding resistors that won't melt may be anywhere from difficult to impossible.
That is why all the reactor companies go for a fully functional production design with the first try. Without such a plan and reactor built, you do not get access to fissile material. Since you have to build many of them to ever have a hope of making money fast iteration is gone be difficult.
In general they all want to use the same basic design with different fuel and different operations to create a different type of reactor. Uranium fast burners are the easiest, thorium breeders are much further away.
For Molten Salt Reactors, the most advanced in development is probably IMSR by Terrestrial Energy, after that SSR by Moltex Energy are both currently in Canadian regulatory process.
Flibe energy is trying in the US but that is longer term, there is not even a regulatory process in the US yet. Flibe is by Kirk Sorensen the guy who basically restarted Thorium hype.
In my opinion, humanity should have long been living in the nuclear age and its kind of crazy that we are not.