In the News

David LeBlanc, Terrestrial Energy’s president and chief technology officer, said technical collaboration through interactions with the GIF were “invaluable” to realise the global potential for the company’s MSR technology. “The GIF recognises that with nuclear innovation, we can meet the urgent global market need for clean, affordable and cost-competitive energy,” he said.

Generation 4 nuclear reactors—including molten salt reactors now being developed by the Canadian firm Terrestrial Energy—are being designed to reduce energy poverty and push billions of the world’s poorest people towards prosperity.

“Developers of generation IV fission designs, such as Canada’s Terrestrial Energy…have entered into R&D partnerships with utilities, aiming for grid supply by the 2020s,” reads the cover story in MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 issue, curated by Bill Gates.

Another generation IV variant, the molten-salt reactor, is safer than earlier designs because it can cool itself even if the system loses power completely. Canadian company Terrestrial Energy plans to build a 190 MW plant in Ontario, with its first reactors producing power before 2030 at a cost it says can compete with natural gas.

Dr. James Conca writes that Terrestrial Energy is on its way to making their innovative design, the Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR®), a reality.

NRG is to carry out testing of materials, including graphite, for key components of Terrestrial Energy’s Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR®) power plant in the High-Flux Reactor at Petten in the Netherlands under a contract announced on 5 February.

There are many reasons to be excited about advanced nuclear reactors. We have, in companies such as NuScale, Terrestrial Energy, Oklo, TerraPower, X-Energy and many more, the entrepreneurial spirit.

Nuclear utilities are playing a growing role in Canadian SMR development and their operational expertise could support the first fleet deployment at mining sites.

Nuclear generation as we know it may be dead, but the future of nuclear is bright. There are over 50 start-ups in North America developing generation IV reactor designs with $1.3 billion in investments.

Terrestrial Energy has contracted BWXT Canada Ltd for technical consultation and design assistance in the development of steam generators and heat exchangers for its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR), which entered the second phase of a vendor design review by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) in October.