ThorCon, (Martingale, USA)

1. Introduction
ThorCon is a molten salt nuclear reactor. Unlike all current operating reactors, the fuel is in
liquid form. The molten salt can be circulated with a pump, and passively drained in the
event of an accident. ThorCon operates at slightly above atmospheric pressure (similar to that
in ones garden hose) and can thus use normal pipe thicknesses and easily automated, shipstyle steel plate construction methods. The entire nuclear portion of the plant is underground,
as shown in Figure 1. This drawing shows a 1 GWe ThorCon composed of four 250 MWe
modules. The decay heat cooling towers are on the left. The underground nuclear island is
center left. The yellow rectangles are hatches and are served by gantry cranes. The turbogenerator halls are center, and the switchyard is on the far right. The main cooling towers, if
required, are to the right of the switchyard. The cranes allow periodic replacement of all
critical components including the reactors and fuelsalt. The reactors and fuelsalt are
transported by a special-purpose ship shown in the background.

Figure 1: Birdseye View of 1 GWe ThorCon (Reproduced curtesy of ThorCon)

2. Target Application
The first planned application of ThorCon reactors is to produce electricity in developing
nations. As such, the presumption is that the grid is still developing and the reactor must be
capable of off-grid startup and thus must not depend on grid power. Cost is critical in these
markets: ThorCon must be cost competitive with coal and be deployable at least as rapidly. A
pre-feasibility study was initiated in Indonesia in 2016.
3. Development Milestones
2011

Conceptual design development

2016

Pre-feasibility study in Indonesia

2018

Pre-fission testing starts

2020

Fission testing starts

2022

Commercial operation starts

4. General Design Description

Design Philosophy
The following principles are followed in the ThorCon design:
ThorCon is Walkaway Safe
ThorCon is a simple molten salt reactor with the fuel in liquid form. If the reactor overheats
for whatever reason, it will automatically shut itself down and drain the fuel from the primary
loop and passively remove the decay heat. There is no need for any operator intervention and
the operators cannot prevent the draining and cooling. The reactor is 15 m underground.
ThorCon has four gas tight barriers between the fuelsalt and the atmosphere. The reactor
operates at slight over pressure so that in the event of a primary loop rupture, there is no
dispersal energy and also no phase change. The spilled fuel merely flows to a drain tank
where it is passively cooled. The most troublesome fission products, including 90Sr and 137Cs,
are chemically bound to the salt. They will end up in the drain tank as well.
ThorCon is Ready to Go
The ThorCon design foresees no need for new technology development. ThorCon is a scaleup of the successful Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE). There is no technical reason
why a full-scale 250 MWe prototype cannot be operating within four years. The intention is
to subject this prototype to all the failures and problems that the designers claim the plant can
handle. As soon as the prototype passes these tests, commercial production can begin.
ThorCon is Rapidly Deployable
The entire ThorCon plant including the building is designed to be manufactured in blocks on
a shipyard-like assembly line. These 150 to 500 ton, fully outfitted, pre-tested blocks are then
barged to the site. A 1 GWe power station will require less than 200 blocks. Site work is
limited to excavation and erecting the blocks. This should result in order of magnitude
improvements in productivity, quality control, and build time. A single large reactor yard can
turn out one hundred 1 GWe ThorCons per year. The philosophy is therefore that ThorCon is
much more than a power plant; it is a new system for building power plants.
ThorCon is Fixable
The design does not foresee any complex repairs to be attempted on site. Except for the
building everything else in the nuclear island is replaceable with little or no interruption in
power output. Every four years the entire primary loop is changed out, returned to a
centralized recycling facility, decontaminated, disassembled, inspected, and refurbished. The
instrumentation design and monitoring system is designed to identify incipient problems
before they can lead to failures. Major upgrades must be possible without significantly
disrupting power generation. A nuclear power plant following such a change-out strategy can
in principle operate indefinitely; but decommissioning should be little more than removing,
but in this case not replacing, all the replaceable parts.
ThorCon is Cheaper than Coal
ThorCon requires far less resources than a coal plant. Assuming efficient, evidence-based
regulation, ThorCon aims to produce clean, reliable, carbon-free electricity at less than the
cost of coal.
Nuclear Steam Supply System
Figure 2 is a cutaway view of the underground structure. ThorCon is divided into 250 MWe
power modules. The drawing shows two such modules. Each module contains two
replaceable reactors in sealed Cans. The Cans are depicted in red in the drawing. They sit in

silos. At any one time, just one of the Cans of each module is producing power. The other
Can is in cooldown mode. Every four years the Can that has been cooling is removed and
replaced with a new Can. The fuelsalt is transferred to the new Can, and the Can that has
been operating goes into cool down mode.

Figure 2: Cutaway view of two module silo hall (Reproduced courtesy of ThorCon)
Figure 3 takes a look inside a Can. The Can contains the reactor, which we call the Pot, a
primary loop heat exchanger (PHX), and a primary loop pump (PLP). The pump (blue upper
left) takes liquid fuelsalt a mixture of sodium, beryllium, uranium and thorium fluorides
from the Pot (orange) at 704oC, and pushes the fuelsalt over to the PHX at a rate of just
under 3000 kg/s (1 m3/sec).

Figure 3: The ThorCon can: a pot, a pump, and a still (right)

(Reproduced courtesy of ThorCon)

MAJOR TECHNICAL PARAMETERS

Parameter

Value

Technology developer

Martingale

Country of origin

United States of America - for deployment in Indonesia

Reactor type

Thermal Molten Salt Reactor

Electrical capacity (MWe)

250 (per module)

Thermal capacity (MWth)

557 (per module)

Expected capacity factor (%)

> 90%

Design life (years)

80 years

Plant footprint

(m2)

20,000 for 500 MWe

Coolant/moderator

NaF, BeF2 salt, graphite moderated

Primary circulation

Forced circulation

System pressure (MPa)

1.05

Core inlet/exit temperatures (oC)

565 / 704

Main reactivity control mechanism

Negative temperature coeff; salt flow rate, control rod insertion

RPV height (m)

12 m includes full primary loop and off-gas

RPV diameter (m)

8m

RPV or module weight (metric ton)

400

Configuration of reactor coolant system

Four loops: Fuel salt, secondary salt, solar salt, steam.

Power conversion process

Rankine steam

Passive Safety Features:

Fully passive shutdown and cooling. 72 day grace period.

Active Safety Features:

Drain fuel salt, shutdown rods.

Fuel salt

12% heavy metal in NaBe salt.

Heavy metal composition

80% Th, 16% U-238, 4% U-235

Makeup salt

12% uranium (enriched to 19.7%) in NaBe salt

Fuel enrichment (%)

19.7

Fuel burnup (GWd/ton)

256 GWd/ton U

Fuel cycle (months)

96

Approach to engineered safety systems

Avoid them. Physical limit on fuel addition rate; H/W limit on pump
speed change rate.

Number of safety trains

Three means to remove decay heat. Two are fully passive.

Emergency Safety Systems

Refuelling outage (days)

Four levels of containment, three cooling systems, two shutdown

systems
1) primary cooling to ocean, 2) natural circulation to air, 3) steam
release
approximately 21

Distinguishing features

Low cost, full passive safety, short construction time

Modules per plant

Arbitrary; as required

Target construction duration (months)

Seismic design

Target 0.8 pga

Design Status

Finishing conceptual design

Residual Heat Removal System

Flowing downward through the PHX (skinny blue), the fuelsalt transfers heat to a secondary
salt, and is cooled to 564 oC in the process. The fuelsalt then flows over to the bottom of the
Pot, and rises through the reactor core where the graphite moderator slows the neutrons
produced by the fissile uranium, allowing a portion of the uranium in the fuelsalt to fission as
it rises through the Pot, heating the salt and (indirectly) converting a portion of the thorium to
fissile uranium.
The Pot pressure is 3 bar gage. The outlet temperature of 704 oC results in an overall plant
efficiency of about 45%, and a net electrical output per Can of 250MW. The Cans net
consumption of fissile uranium is 112 kg per year. The Can (red) is a cylinder 11.6 m high
and 7.3 m in diameter. It weighs about 400 tons. The Can has only one major moving part,
the pump impeller.
Directly below the Can is the Fuelsalt Drain Tank (FDT) (green). In the bottom of the Can is
a fuse valve (grey). The fuse valve is merely a low point in a drain line. At normal operating
temperatures, the fuelsalt in the fuse valve is frozen creating a plug. But if the Can heats up
for any reason, the plug will thaw, and the fuel salt will drain to the FDT. Since the drain tank
has no moderator, fission will stop almost immediately. This drain is totally passive. There is
nothing an operator can do to prevent it.
A critically important feature of ThorCon is the membrane wall (blue). The membrane wall is
made up of vertical steel tubes connected by strips of steel plate which are welded to the
tubes. These tubes are filled with water and connected by circular headers, top and bottom.
The top header is connected by a riser to a condenser in the decay heat pond located under
the decay heat cooling towers. The outlet of the heat exchanger is connected to the wall
bottom header by a downcomer. The Can is cooled by thermal radiation to the silo membrane
wall. This heat converts a portion of the water in the wall tubes to steam. This steam/water
mixture rises by natural circulation to the cooling pond, where the steam is condensed, and
returned to the bottom of the membrane wall. In this process, some of the water in the pond is
evaporated. The decay heat cooling towers return almost all this water to the pond.
The silo membrane wall also cools the Fuelsalt Drain Tank (FDT). The drain tank is tall, thin
rectangular trough that has been wrapped into a circle. This arrangement provides sufficient
radiating area to keep the peak tank temperature after a drain within the limits of the tank
material. This cooling process is totally passive, requiring neither operator intervention nor
any outside power.
Each Can is located in a Silo. The top of the Silo is 14 m underground. Figure 4 shows the
secondary salt loop in green. The secondary salt is a mixture of sodium and beryllium
fluoride containing no uranium or thorium. Hot secondary salt is pumped out of the top of the
Primary Heat Exchanger to a Secondary Heat Exchanger where it transfers its heat to a
mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate commonly called solar salt from its use as an energy
storage medium in solar plants. The solar salt, shown in purple in Figure 4, in turn transfers
its heat to a supercritical steam loop, shown in red.
ThorCon is a high temperature reactor that translates to thermal efficiency of up to 45%
compared to about 32% for standard light water reactors. This reduces capital costs and cuts
cooling water requirements by 60%. It also allows us to use the same steam cycle as a
modern coal plant.

Figure 4: Silo Hall Cross-Section

Reactor Core
The reactor core is inside the pot (Figure 3). The core is 90% filled with graphite slabs, the
moderator. The core is 5m diameter, and 5.7m high.
Fuel Characteristics
The fuelsalt is NaF-BeF2-ThF4-UF4 76/12/9.5/2.5 where the uranium is 19.7% enriched. As
fissile is consumed more fissile (either U233 or Pu239) is generated but not enough to replace
the fuel burned. The reactor has no excess reactivity, no burnable poisons, no poison control
rods. Makeup fuel must be added daily.
Fuel Handling System
Makeup fuel is added by applying gas pressure to the makeup fuelsalt tank which forces
makeup fuel into the primary loop. The makeup fuel composition is NaF-BeF2-UF4 76/12/12
where the uranium is 19.7% enriched. The makeup fuel addition rate is physically limited to
ensure the adding reactivity rate stays within acceptable limits. Excess fuelsalt flows into a
holding tank.
Reactivity Control
The primary reactivity control is temperature and fuelsalt flow rate. For slow reactivity
control makeup fuelsalt (or makeup fertile salt with no fissile) additions allow modest daily
increase or decrease of the reactivity.
Reactor Pressure Vessel
The ThorCon reactor is never under high pressure so that the typical term Reactor Pressure
Vessel does not really apply. In the design the Can plus the Fuel Drain Tank fulfil the same
function since all radioactive material (except tritium) should be contained within these
structures. Since no high pressure is present that can act as a driving force to spread the
content into the environment, the RPV does not have the central importance in an MSR that it
does in a LWR.

5.
Safety Features
The ThorCon design combines a negative temperature coefficient with a large margin
between the operating temperature of 700 oC and the fuelsalts boiling temperature (1430 oC)
to assure passive, totally unavoidable, shutdown and cooling. In any event that raises the
temperature of the salt much above the operating level, the reactor will automatically shut
itself down. If the high temperature persists, the fuse valve will thaw and drain the fuel from
the primary loop to the drain tank, where the membrane wall will passively remove the decay
heat. There is no need for any operator intervention at any time since no actions such as any
valves realigned is needed by either system or operator control. In fact there is nothing the
operators can do to prevent the drain and cooling. The decay heat is transferred to an external
pond which has sufficient water for 72 days cooling. After 72 days without any intervention
the water in the pond will be running low. Adding more water is simple since the pond is
accessible and at atmospheric pressure.
Release Resistant The ThorCon reactor is 15 m underground. ThorCon has four gas tight
barriers between the fuelsalt and the atmosphere. Three of those barriers are more than 10 m
underground. ThorCon reactor operates at near-ambient pressure. In the event of a primary
loop rupture, there is no dispersal energy and no phase change and no vigorous chemical
reactions (like zirconium and steam). The spilled fuel merely flows to the drain tank where it
is passively cooled. Moreover, the most troublesome fission products, including iodine-131,
strontium-90 and cesium-137, are chemically bound to the salt. They will end up in the drain
tank as well. Even if all four barriers are somehow breached, almost all these salt seekers will
not disperse.
No separate, spent fuel storage ThorCon uses an eight-year fuelsalt processing cycle, after
which the used salt is allowed to cool down in the non-operating Can for four years,
eliminating the need for a separate, vulnerable spent fuel storage facility. The fuelsalt that is
cooling is as well-protected as the fuelsalt that is currently being burned.
Four loop separation of steam and fuelsalt. ThorCon employs four loops in transferring heat
from the reactor to the steam turbine. The solar salt loop captures any tritium that has made it
to the secondary loop, and more importantly ensures that a rupture in the steam generator
creates no harmful chemicals and harmlessly vents to the Steam Generating Cell via an open
standpipe.
6.
Plant safety and Operational Performances
Load following is accomplished by changing the pump speed while keeping the temperatures
relatively constant. The requirements for load following are drawn from EU Utility
Requirements for Light Water Reactors. Since the off-gases are continuously removed xenon
poisoning and oscillations are not an issue. No neutron poisons are used in the control of the
reactor which reduces fuel consumption.
7.
Instrumentation and Control systems
The instrumentation and control and even the operators are not safety critical in the design.
ThorCon instrumentation uses a multiplicity of sensors to record and report the condition of
the power plant. Statistical process control is used to track trend lines and detect incipient
failures such as bearing wear. A common control center for all modules in a power plant
minimizes staffing requirements. Continuous reporting of plant conditions to a central
engineering facility monitoring conditions at all plants allows for fleet wide analysis and
makes expert advice available to any plant experiencing unusual conditions as well as
monitoring plants for unusual activity.
7

8.
Plant Arrangement
Sections 1 and 4 (Figures 1-4) describe the plant arrangement. The control building is shared
among all modules in a power plant. In the most common deployment envisaged two power
modules will drive a single 600 MWe turbine/generator. This size was chosen as it should be
competitive priced per MWe while also suitable for smaller deployments.
9.
Design and Licensing Status
Conceptual design is nearly complete. License discussions have been started with Bapeten
(Indonesian regulator).
10.
Plant Economics
In order to be successful, ThorCon must be able to compete with coal with zero CO2 price. A
first comparison was therefore made with the cost of coal plants. Since ThorCon uses the
same turbine island and electrical side as a standard 500 MWe supercritical coal plant, the
cost comparison was made on the steam generation parts. When the steel and concrete
requirements of a 1 GWe plant was compared, the ThorCon nuclear island requires one-fifth
as much steel and one-third as much concrete as the coal plant boiler, fuel handling, and ash
handling systems.
Moreover, almost all the ThorCon concrete is non-structural, and simple construction of
concrete dumped into the steel sandwich walls; while a large part of the coal plant concrete is
slow, labor intensive, reinforced concrete. Based only on this resource basis the overnight
cost of the ThorCon nuclear island should be less than one-third that of the coal plants steam
generation side.
Other costs also need to be taken into account. A 1GW ThorCon requires 1500 tons of very
high quality graphite, 1300 tons of SUS 316, 220 tons of the superalloy Haynes 230, 2,500
tons of lead, and 200,000 m3 of excavation. But these and other adjustments add a little more
than 100 million dollars to the cost of a 1 GWe plant or about $100/kW. Overall, the resource
cost of the ThorCon nuclear island is less than one-half that of the coal plants steam
generation systems, or less than a $500 per kW. Based on this assessment ThorCon is cheaper
than coal, even without taking fuel costs into account.