London, 13th July 2018
Just weeks after its success in being selected as a winner in the UK government’s Advanced Modular Reactors competition, Moltex is delighted to announce that it has also been selected by New Brunswick Energy Solutions Corporation and New Brunswick Power to progress development of its SSR-W (Stable Salt Reactor – Wasteburner) technology in New Brunswick, with the aim of deploying its first SSR-W at the Point Lepreau nuclear reactor site before 2030.
The agreement provides $5m of financial support to Moltex for its immediate development activities and Moltex will open its North America headquarters in Saint John and build its development team there.
“The Moltex stable salt reactor technology is a perfect fit for New Brunswick’s power needs,” said Moltex CEO Stephen Haighton. “It uses spent nuclear fuel, which could help solve the province’s future spent-fuel disposal challenge. It is a physically small modular reactor but is able to store energy, so can double or triple its output at peak demand times during the day. Most importantly, the stable salt reactor technology produces very low-cost, clean energy and can reduce the cost of electricity to consumers while achieving low-carbon targets. We are very excited to join our new partners and establish our North American headquarters in New Brunswick.”
The Moltex SSR technology has now been competitively selected, and is being financially supported, by two expert, experienced government organisations as a particularly promising advanced nuclear technology deployable at grid scale (300 to 3000MW). Both governments looked beyond domestic nuclear champions to the global network of entrepreneurial nuclear vendors.
We see excellent synergy between the UK and Canada. These two friendly nations bring complementary capabilities and Moltex has and will continue to encourage the closest possible cooperation between them. It is our hope that together we can bring clean, low carbon energy to the world while bringing great economic benefits to both countries.
The selection of the Moltex technology reflects its unique advantages over both current reactor technologies and other advanced reactor concepts. These include
- Grid scale energy storage so the SSR can produce electricity at triple its reactor power for the 8 hours a day of peak demand while running the reactor itself continuously at full capacity
- Low cost conversion of spent fuel from today’s reactors into fresh fuel for the SSR, saving billions in costs of waste disposal
- Low cost electricity, estimated at <3.5p (<5c) per kWhr when operated as baseload, and 4p (6c) when operated as a peak demand plant
- Capital cost per kW similar to a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine plant but with far lower running costs
Moltex sees an exciting future for global electricity generation with the cost of intermittent solar and wind energy continuing to fall while SSR technology provides “available on demand” power to complement the renewables. As the costs of nuclear energy and of renewables converge to a level well below todays fossil fuel power costs, the era of burning coal and gas for electricity production will draw to a close.
For more information contact Stephen Haighton, CEO Moltex Energy Ltd (+44) 7802 534665 stephenhaighton@moltexenergy.com
