Quote:
Originally Posted by burn_this_city
What is a rough cost on a molten salt reactor? Has it been proven as commercially feasible or is it still in the lab?
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Best estimates at this point are in the range of 455 - 910 $/kW(th). For a typical SAGD project phase of 30kbbl/d you'd need about 375 MW(th) to generate the steam during peak production, so in the range of $170 - $340 million per phase. You'd take away the costs to construct and install the traditional steam generation units (OTSGs, Evap/Drum boiler, HRSGs, whatever the alternative would be), but you'd still need to treat produced water. Of course we're efforting to go through more detailed design and engineering for a more accurate estimate but this is a good approximation. Again, the fuel savings is what pays for this capex increase over the base case. It is a relatively quick payout and the other interesting point is that it could conceivably be converted to strict electricity generation once the bitumen has been recovered and the infield facilities like pads, pipelines and roads get reclaimed.
There was a pilot reactor with 8 MWth output that ran from 1960-65 in Tennessee (Oak Ridge National Labs MSRE if you're interested). Other than that, there are a number of programs around the world that are investigating a variety of design configurations but none are commercial at this point and most are being designed to supply base load electricity for large urban centres on the scale of 1 GWe per plant as opposed to the small modular concept that is optimized for process heat that our team is developing.
The closest comparison was the pebble bed modular reactor being developed out of south africa. A great design, but many R&D challenges. It also might fit alright with SAGD but the reactor dimensions are much more restrictive and you'd have to build on site as opposed to off-site + hauling modules.