Terrestrial Energy & IMSR
Terrestrial Energy & IMSR
21 December 2020
Simon Irish
Chief Executive Officer of Terrestrial Energy Inc
Transforming the way the world’s energy is produced
Simon is CEO of Terrestrial Energy and has a 20+ year background in the financial sector, which he has used to take a fresh look at the commercial challenges faced by conventional nuclear technology today and to guide the commercialization of IMSR® technology. He has a clear view on energy challenges that we face today – we need more energy, much more, and it needs to be clean energy.
Nuclear energy is the only source of clean energy that can scale to meet the challenges of this massive problem, but the exciting question for Simon is – what technology will successfully harness nuclear energy? He believes that IMSR® is that technology, and it has the potential to play an important role in our future clean energy mix.
Terrestrial's mission
Terrestrial Energy’s IMSR® advanced modular reactor brings diverse benefits that will contribute to solving one of the biggest world problems: Energy supply.
Energy poverty is a global issue. In North America each citizen has the equivalent 24-7 primary energy demand of 90 old 100W tungsten light bulbs of energy every day of the year, in Africa that might be only 5 to 10 light bulbs. That is a huge difference in energy availability to a huge number of the world’s population.
Energy poverty is associated with a range of consequences for people’s health and wellbeing. In fact, it affects many policy areas – including health, environment and economics. Addressing energy poverty has the potential to bring multiple benefits, including less money spent by governments on health, reduced air pollution, and increased economic activity.
Source: IPCC data for pulverized coal, combined-cycle gas, dedicated biomass, photovoltaic solar, hydropower and onwhore wind; Climate check for IMSR® comparison.
How did it all start?
Simon previously worked in finance, investment management. Yet he always had a strong interest in the energy theme: “Energy is the great enabler of human progress and energy and access to energy has shaped history. Today we need more energy, and we must do that responsibly.”
In 2009 he took a three-month sabbatical to research the subject. He recognized that our energy choices are now impacting our environment in a tragic way and energy poverty is the deep root of global inequality. “We need much more energy and it needs to be clean and sustainable with low environmental impacts,” he said.
As part of that research, he attended conferences on Generation IV nuclear technology, where he met members of a group that would later come together to form Terrestrial Energy. One of whom was David LeBlanc, Terrestrial Energy’s CTO and a globally recognized authority on Molten Salt Reactor technologies. David is the technical brain behind the company’s technology.
In late 2012 Terrestrial Energy was founded, born of the common interest of its founders: to successfully commercialize a Generation IV reactor design and make a contribution to our energy problem.
NRG & Terrestrial Energy Partnership
Terrestrial Energy’s technology is well understood at the national laboratory level, and with the Company’s comprehension engineering and licensing program, it is ready for market. Part of that program involves the confirmatory testing of the reactor key systems and components, which is necessary to support submissions to national nuclear regulators. To complete these tests, Terrestrial Energy works with capable and recognized research institutions, such as NRG.
NRG has a strong and stable neutron source, which is world-class. Furthermore, it has considerable experience in designing and undertaking tests to the standards required of regulators. We are pleased that NRG has maintained its knowledge and research capability in advanced nuclear technology and this sophistication is adding considerable value to our IMSR® development program.
NRG has a worldclass testing facility with a strong and stable neutron source + experience with regulators. We’re glad that NRG maintained its knowledge and research capability in advanced nuclear technology. My team has reported very positively about the work and interaction with NRG - Simon Irish, CEO of Terrestrial Energy
Results and benefit
What are the main benefits of this research project for Terrestrial Energy?
According to CEO Simon Irish:
“We found a world-class and reliable partner for the qualification of graphite, a key material in our reactor. The irradiation experiments are designed to deliver reliable data that support our regulatory safety case for the IMSR power plant.
NRG has a long history of graphite qualification program in the UK, including the process of aligning with the regulator. Their knowledge of the standards and the evidence expected of regulators helped us to move quickly to define scope of objectives and requirements of test.
NRG has shared their data and experience from graphite irradiations in the past. This helped Terrestrial Energy to compare the properties of graphites to the requirements for IMSR® graphite, reducing the candidate group of potential graphite grades.”
Interested?
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Team Irradiations
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What are the benefits of IMSR?
Against the other gen 4 technologies, MSR is getting a lot of interest in many countries. They are quite small, modular, and have a fast construction.
Challenges on testing graphite for nuclear applications
Terrestrial Energy and NRG have established a graphite irradiation program that systematically analyzes IMSR graphite behavior Graphite is a key component of Terrestrial Energy’s Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) power plant. This program provides data to Terrestrial Energy that demonstrates to nuclear quality standards the structural changes of IMSR® graphite under the irradiation conditions experienced during 7-year life of IMSR Core-unit. Terrestrial Energy and NRG presented their graphite irradiation program at the 20th International Nuclear Graphite Specialist Meeting in Brugge.
How did you overcome these challenges?