In the News

Terrestrial Energy's Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) has entered the second phase of a vendor design review by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).

Terrestrial Energy USA, a company that is developing a fourth-generation molten salt nuclear reactor, has joined forces with Southern Co. and several U.S.

Terrestrial Energy announced Wednesday it is partnering with Southern Company and several US Department of Energy laboratories to develop a “more climate-friendly process for producing industrial hydrogen” using Terrestrial Energy’s generation IV Integral Molten Salt Reactor. “The two-year research and development project will examine the efficiency, design and economics of the IMSR power plant to produce carbon-free, industrial-scale hydrogen using the hybrid sulfur process,” Terrestrial Energy said in a statement Wednesday.

What will really determine nuclear energy’s fate is whether the nuclear community can change the conversation about this technology that has proven its worth many times over.

Simon Irish saw that countries around the globe needed to build a boggling amount of clean-power projects to replace their fossil fuel infrastructure, while also providing enough energy for rising demand from China, India, and other rapidly growing countries.

New reactors could also reduce costs by being safer. Conventional reactors have a fundamental risk of meltdown, largely because they were designed to power submarines.

Terrestrial is far from alone. Dozens of nuclear startups are popping up around the country, aiming to solve the well-known problems with nuclear power — radioactive waste, meltdowns, weapons proliferation, and high costs.

At a conference in 2011, Simon Irish, an investment manager in New York, met an engineer with an innovative design for a nuclear reactor cooled by molten salt.

“The Pacific Northwest seems to be a magnet for innovative and traditional nuclear power,” Dr. James Conca, a nuclear expert, recently wrote in Forbes.

Meanwhile, the DOE also announced technical voucher awards to U.S. companies selected under the DOE’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative. Included among the companies selected to receive GAIN technology development vouchers is Terrestrial Energy USA ($500,000). Terrestrial Energy USA in a May 2 news release said that it received an award for advanced nuclear instrumentation development work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a U.S.