That molten salt reactor will need to have a negative cost in order to compete with the cost of stored renewable energy.
The future of nuclear energy must either abandon the thermal steam cycle for electricity generation, or generate massive value from the nuclear reaction part apart from generating steam.
That's not entirely true, and safety features and regulations are a major part of nuclear's cost.
> That molten salt reactor will need to have a negative cost in order to compete with the cost of stored renewable energy
Does stored renewable energy come for free? From what i recall, there's still no actual solution to that problem on a big scale.
Which regulations -that aren't there for safety- are driving up cost of nuclear power? I can't find any. Are you saying we should cut down on safety to make nuclear able to compete?
Safety systems and regulations greatly inflate costs. Any reasonable, safe measures that can be taken to reduce them will make nuclear more profitable.
A good example of this is small modular reactors. Current nuclear plants need to be approved by regulators on a case by case basis. Nuscale, a SMR company, is the first to get their module design signed off by the nuclear regulatory commission. This means that they can build them at volume and skip most of the red tape.
Analysts expect Nuscale's systems to be 1/4 to 1/3 cheaper than current nuclear plants. Imagine the price reduction of a SMR with half the complexity.
I'd love to see someone crack the code, but based on everything I've read, SMR is not going to be the silver bullet in changing nuclear's garbage ROI, unlike I hoped some years ago.
Which is how much? We don't have a good way to store energy right now.