We are in conversations with the Dutch and the French government to allocate a site for our demonstrator. We are investigating with EPZ, operator of the Borssele plant, whether their site could accommodate the first Thorizon system.  The Dutch law currently provides three possible locations (Borssele, 2de Maasvlakte & Eemshaven). Depending on Dutch nuclear energy policy other locations could become available.

We aim to complete the first-of-its-kind Thorizon One reactor within 10 years. The feasibility of this timeline has been confirmed by an independent due diligence. To accelerate this timeline, we aim for strong industry collaboration, additional investor commitment and governmental support, which would allow the execution of design, licensing, qualification, and construction to take place more in parallel.

The Thorizon One reactor is designed to harness the untapped energy potential in spent nuclear fuel, ensuring that valuable resources are not wasted. We can extract up to 25% additional energy from spent nuclear fuel, thereby recycling. approximately half of the long-lived waste produced by conventional nuclear power plants. The Thorizon One does not generate new long-lived waste. In future iterations, our designs aim to further reduce or potentially eliminate long-lived waste altogether.

Thorizon’s technology enables future upgrades of the reactor’s primary system, to further enhance performance. We aim for also using unused, depleted Uranium in the future as fuel.

Traditional nuclear reactors produce energy as well as short and long-lived waste that needs to be stored safely. However, the long-lived waste consists of heavier elements that still store a lot of energy. In our Thorizon system, we split these heavy elements and turn them into energy and short-lived waste, without generating new long-lived waste.

The Thorizon reactor is inherently safe by design:

• • Safety by design and gravity: ‘walk away safe’ – when the pumps stop, the salt drops to the non-critical zone and the reactor shuts down.
  • Operates at low pressure in all circumstances. Operation at low pressure significantly reduces risks of release of nuclear materials
  • Higher temperature slows down reaction: the reactor regulates itself. The salt is already molten, a nuclear meltdown scenario is not possible

To enable production at-scale, we need to be cost competitive. We believe our levelized cost of energy (LCOE) will be significantly below conventional nuclear plants:

• • The inherent safety features of the reactor will reduce the need for expensive active systems and the cost of high-pressure resistant building. This will decrease development and construction costs.
  • The reactor will operate with increased fuel efficiency: higher operating temperatures result in 10-15% more effective conversion to electricity. By using nuclear waste as a fuel, costs are avoided, and valuable energy is created.
  • Modularity reduces risks and ensures continuous improvement. Modules will be produced in series off-site, under controlled quality conditions, decreasing construction costs and risks. The cartridges are improved with upgrades every 5 – 10 years thereby improving the performance of the reactor.

The Thorizon One reactor generates approximately 250 MW of thermal power, delivered in the form of 550°C clean steam. This versatile energy source can be utilized in various applications, including in chemical industry and for hydrogen production. Alternatively, it can be converted into 100 MW of electricity. This amount of electricity is sufficient to power either 250 thousand households or one datacenter.

During the operation of the reactor and the generation of industrial steam or electricity no CO2 is generated, since we do not use fossil fuels. This is the key advantage of nuclear energy production, it provides ample carbon free energy.

Molten salt reactors in general have an interesting feature: the coolant is also the fuel, and the molten salt remains liquid under all thinkable circumstances. Due to these and other inherent safety features of the Thorizon a core melt is technically not possible.

Yes, absolutely, we are on a large mission and need all the support we can get. Through our funding round in the Summer of 2022, we have funding secured for the current development plan. However we would like to accelerate our development trajectory by developing a non-fissile prototype, in order to do so we are preparing a funding round in the first quarter of 2024.

For more info please contact us so we can keep you informed.