Multi-million Pound Crowdfunding Success for New Nuclear Plant (Moltex Energy)

Here’s some evidence that there’s an appetite out there from individual investors to fund new energy technology to quite a large degree.

Fortune is reporting about a new and successful effort by a British company Moltex Energy to crowdfund the development of a molten salt nuclear fission reactor they call a stable salt reactor (SSR) which uses nuclear waste as a fuel, and which the company claims is inherently safe because as the temperature rises in the reactor, the fission slows down, and would shut off if there was overheating, avoiding the possibility any kind of meltdown event.

The Fortune article is here:

https://fortune.com/2019/10/18/nuclear-power-crowdfunding-moltex/

Moltex claims that the size of its SSR reactor would be less 1/20th the size of a conventional reactor of equal power, and the plants would be cheaper to build and operate than even conventional power plants.

There are many companies working on molten salt nuclear designs, but one interesting aspect about the Moltex SSR is the way they are going about funding their work.  Fortune reports that Moltex launched  an effort to raise 700,000 GBP via crowdfunding via the Shadow Foundr website, and ended up raising 2.7 million GBP from 156 funders.

Moltex states that New Brunswick Power in Canada wants to build a SSR reactor, and if all goes to plan it will be going online in 2028.

Here is an overview of the SSR