Flibe Energy

Corporation

Flibe Energy was founded on April 6, 2011 by Kirk Sorensen, former NASA aerospace engineer and formerly chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering, and Kirk Dorius, an intellectual property attorney and mechanical engineer. The name "Flibe" comes from FLiBe, a Fluoride salt of Lithium and Beryllium, used in LFTRs. Flibe Energy Incorporated is registered in the State of Delaware. Their advertising slogan is "LFTR by Flibe Energy, powering the next thousand years"

Small modular reactor design

Presenting at the October 2011 Thorium Energy Conference, Sorensen described how various factors influence design for small modular reactors.

Neutron temperature requirements:

Operating temperature ("Moderate" defined as 250-350 °C versus "High" defined as 700-1000 °C) and pressure ("Atmospheric" versus "High") is related to coolant type; there are four, one for each temperature/pressure combination:

Various conclusions about the three fuels and possible reactor types were then drawn:

Higher temperature reactors can operate at higher thermal efficiency (e.g. with Brayton cycle turbines), which is desirable. High reactor pressure is a safety concern.‹See TfD›

Some perceive U-235 as a finite and scarce resource, but the Earth's crust likely contains 40 trillion tons of it. Nonetheless, this reactor model plans to exploit a far larger fuel source, thorium. Gas-based concepts (e.g. PBMR, VHTR, GT-MHR) are also feasible.

The liquid metal coolants used are poor neutron moderators, thus such systems strongly favor U-238/Pu-239 usage; adding moderators to enable use with U-235 or Th-232/U-233 would be "feasible but unattractive". Conversely, water is a good moderator and this rules out exclusive plutonium breeding in such systems. Gas-cooled systems with U-238/Pu-239 (Gas Cooled Fast Breeder Reactor (GCFR) and EM2 concepts) are described as feasible but with difficult fuel processing, while molten salt systems with U-238/Pu-239 (e.g. MSFR) are only "somewhat feasible."

He notes that while Th-232/U-233 was used in a water-cooled reactor at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station and a gas-cooled reactor at the Fort St. Vrain Generating Station, thorium dioxide fuel is "very difficult to process," making Th-232/U-233 unattractive for all systems except liquid salt, e.g. where thorium and uranium fluorides are used instead.

In summary, the LFTR thus combines the desirable characteristics of abundant fuel supply, high operating temperature, atmospheric operating pressure and simple fuel processing.

Flibe Energy reactor

An independent technology assessment coordinated with EPRI and Southern Company represents the most detailed information so far publicly available about Flibe Energy's proposed LFTR design.

Low pressure, high temperature molten salt reactor

Initial Plan

In the 12 May 2011 "Introduction to Flibe Energy" with Sorensen and Dorius, an interview of Sorensen from 28 May 2011 and another from 14 July 2011, the creation of LFTRs was discussed.

"The real challenge will be getting to the first unit." — Kirk Sorensen

Economics

Sorensen estimates that it will cost "several hundred million dollars"‹See TfD› to get to the first LFTR.

Besides the safety aspect (mentioned above) of a LFTR operating at far less pressure than a typical nuclear reactor, Sorensen expects it to reduce costs: "That obviates the need for 9 inch steel pressure vessels, and thick concrete containment structures. Everything gets smaller with Thorium and fluoride salts, and that provides a substantial economic benefit." However, there are existing reactors that operate at a lower pressure than PWRs. Every other reactor design other than the PWR has lower pressure, including BWRs, CANDUs, RBMKS, GCRs, FBRs, etc...

In a February 2011 interview with Kiki Sanford (two months prior to the founding of Flibe Energy) Sorensen estimated that the production cost of a LFTR (i.e. once research and development has finished), would be on the order of $1–2 per watt, making it competitive with the construction costs of natural gas plants.

Applications

At its most basic level, the function of a LFTR is to act as a source of thermal energy (colloquially: heat). The ability to harness this energy for useful and interesting work is only limited by the laws of thermodynamics and the imagination. Specific examples of other LFTR applications cited by Sorensen:

Military

In order to achieve its goals, Flibe Energy intends to work with the US Armed Services, which have an independent nuclear regulatory authority. Accelerated military development and demonstration can speed later deployment for civilian power production by providing extended materials and operational data to inform civilian reactor licensing through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Many domestic military installations are dependent on surrounding vulnerable local power grids and the US Army would like its bases to have self-sufficient power generation capability (described as "base islanding"), which a LFTR could provide. Presenting at the Thorium Energy Conference on 10 October 2011, Sorensen further described how the US military needs a "remote source of power" in the form of "small rugged reactors" (SRR) "capable of operating in dangerous and remote areas" and how Flibe Energy is initially developing a "SRR LFTR" to meet that need, as it would be portable and easy to assemble/disassemble, obviating vulnerable refueling convoys.

Challenges

Four specific difficulties have been mentioned:

In addition, this reactor may require parts different from existing reactors, making them more expensive.

Kirk Sorensen

Flibe Energy co-founder Kirk Sorensen has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Utah State University, a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Tennessee. He worked at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center from 2000 to 2010, followed by a year at Teledyne Brown Engineering in Huntsville, Alabama as Chief Nuclear Technologist until he left to found Flibe Energy in 2011.

He has discussed the potential of thorium and LFTR technology for The Guardian's 2009 Manchester Report on climate change mitigation, Wired (magazine) and the TEDxYYC conference in 2011.

Sorensen was written about in the book SuperFuel and appears in the documentaries Thorium Remix 2011, The Thorium Dream as well as being credited in the upcoming "film about thorium" titled The Good Reactor.