Updates

Terrestrial Energy today announced the addition of Ontario Power Generation to its Nuclear Innovation Working Group. The working group is advising Terrestrial Energy during Phase 2 of its Vendor Design Review program, which is currently in progress, and on the development and deployment of its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR®) power plant.

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.

Terrestrial Energy has been admitted to the Generation IV International Forum (GIF), currently the only private sector company with this status.

The GIF is a multi-national program established in 2001 to support co-operative research and development of next-generation nuclear reactor technologies.

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.

Terrestrial Energy has completed its siting study with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) that short-lists a number of sites suitable for a commercial power plant that uses the company’s Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR®).

Terrestrial Energy has completed the pre-qualification stage of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ invitation process to site a Small Modular Reactor at a CNL-managed site. Responding to the CNL’s 2018 invitation, Terrestrial Energy presented a siting proposal to CNL for its 195 MWe Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR®).

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