NNadir
NNadir's JournalA Rather Interesting Molten Salt.
I came across a paper about sodium batteries and found it interesting even though I'm not a battery fan kind of guy.
This is it: High-Voltage, Intermediate-Temperature, Fe- and Al-Mixed Metal Halide Molten Salt for Molten Sodium Battery Energy Storage Stephen J. Percival, Adam M. Maraschky, Melissa L. Meyerson, Matthew A. Stalcup, Amanda S. Peretti, Leo J. Small, and Erik D. Spoerke Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2025 64 (47), 22714-22723.
From the text:
Alternatives to lithium-based batteries, such as potassium- (11) and sodium-based batteries, offer comparable performance without the safety and supply chain risks of lithium-ion and are highly desirable. (1,12−21) Sodium-based batteries take advantage of the global abundance of sodium, (22−24) and circumvent many of the supply issues and economic constraints of lithium-based systems. (25) These sodium-based batteries have a long history of development, particularly in molten sodium systems, such as sodium–sulfur and sodium–metal chloride batteries. (12,13,15,16,26) Some sodium-based systems, such as those utilizing fully inorganic molten salt electrolytes, also potentially alleviate the dangers associated with lithium by tolerating overcharge/discharge events and exhibiting low-hazard failure modes. (6,26−29)
Fully inorganic molten salts are an attractive medium for electrochemical energy storage due to their high charge density, high electrical conductivity, and large potential stability windows. (30−34) Furthermore, these completely inorganic molten salts eliminate the flammable solvents found in other battery systems, potentially increasing safety. (16,35) Molten salts have been used to store energy in commercialized ZEBRA batteries employing an NaAlCl4 molten salt electrolyte with an Ni/NiCl2 metal cathode that is oxidized and reduced during cycling. (26,27,36−39) However, hurdles still exist with ZEBRA-type batteries, including the cost of the Ni, representing 63% of the total material cost of the battery (40) and how the insulating, low-solubility NiCl2 on the Ni particles leads to deactivation and capacity loss. (26,27,41,42) Many new alternative ZEBRA-like molten salt catholyte chemistries have been described, which aim to eliminate the previously mentioned ZEBRA battery limitations. (12−14,42,43) Some of these alternative molten salt chemistries operate at lower temperatures (44) and use less-expensive metal halides and metal cathodes, such as zinc, (40) iron, (14,41,45,46) copper, (28) and aluminum, (39,47) or aim to eliminate the ceramic membrane. (43) Operation at low-to-intermediate temperatures (less than 300 °C) can substantially lower operational costs and reduce component degradation, making an attractive target for new molten salt chemistries. (44,48,49) In particular, low-temperature molten salt batteries have demonstrated low-cost, high-energy density storage with high scalability. (16,35,50) These catholytes have been described in the literature and could increase battery capacity, lower operational temperature, and increase cycling current densities. (15,16,29,35) Promising catholytes utilizing Lewis acid-based chemistry have been developed in recent years. (15,35,51−53)
Here, we demonstrate an alternative, fully inorganic, high-voltage, molten salt battery catholyte based on earth-abundant iron and aluminum metal halides. The catholyte, composed of FeCl3/FeCl2, AlCl3, and NaCl salts, forms Lewis acid/base adducts, and certain compositions may show unknown eutectic behavior and melt at temperatures lower than those expected for the given salts. This catholyte is intended to utilize Fe3+/Fe2+ as the redox couple for charge and discharge, enabling the catholyte to remain completely molten, but a higher-than-expected cell voltage at a low depth of discharge (DoD) was found to have another higher-potential redox half-reaction, with chloride ions being utilized. Under both low and high DoD cycling conditions, the catholyte chemistry was evaluated to be stable and have high energy efficiencies.
This combination of salts, using some of the most "earth abundant" elements, aluminum, iron, sodium, and chlorine, melts apparently at around 160oC. I'm somewhat surprised I never heard of it. The cell was operated at a slightly higher temperature 180oC.
There have been lots of discussions of chloride based salts in nuclear applications. I generally am not fond of them because of the accumulation of the radioactive isotope 36Cl from neutron capture in one of chlorine's stable isotopes. 36Cl has a rather long half-life, which potentially would generate festivals of angst in antinukes; even though the collapse of the planetary atmosphere from fossil fuels produces no such angst among that benighted set.
Nevertheless, this battery can either be used for electrical energy storage, or alternatively, thermal energy storage, which is somewhat less thermodynamically suspect. I personally have no real problem with 36Cl, but there's no value in necessarily tweaking the beast of antinukism.
The authors claim, at least for early cycles at low current density, high electrochemical efficiency.
Some figures from the text:
The caption:
The caption:
The caption:
Some remarks from the conclusion of the paper:
...The catholyte is expected to perform even better at the higher 210 °C temperature due to the increased solubility of FeCl2 in the melt. However, the higher-temperature cell design that eliminates the polymeric O-rings, which prevent higher-temperature testing, would require significant new materials development (e.g., glass seals) and lead to increased cell costs. As an alternative, new developments in molten salt composition could decrease the melting temperature of these salts and/or increase the solubility of the FeCl2 at lower temperatures, increasing the observed performance while allowing the continued use of this demonstrated low-temperature and lower-cost cell design. Further testing and optimization of the molten salt compositions will enable the control over the selectivity of the species in the melt and the desired operational cell potential.
I doubt that the reported energy efficiency shown in the graphics accounts for heat loss from the molten salt.
An interesting paper, nonetheless I think.
I shared it with my son, who is working with earth abundant radiation resistant alloys designed for nuclear applications.
Have a pleasant work week.
The Failed Construction Program for the Two Sumner Nuclear Reactors in South Carolina to Be Revived.
Summit to tell story behind the deal to restart SC’s failed nuclear reactorsSouth Carolina Daily Gazette, December 4, 2025.
The state’s second annual nuclear summit will feature a panel conversation with Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton, president of the utility’s governing board Peter McCoy, House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, and state Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort.
Separately, attendees will hear from the executives of Brookfield Asset Management, the New York investment firm in negotiations with Santee Cooper for the purchase of two partially built reactors at the V.C. Summer nuclear station in Fairfield County.
The event is something of a celebration of actions taken over the past year and a half, according to Ethel Bunch, the founder of a nuclear advocacy group — the Palmetto Nuclear Coalition — made up of large energy-using companies and nuclear-related firms that is co-hosting the conference alongside the University of South Carolina.
After all, it was during the state’s inaugural nuclear summit in August 2024 that Davis, one of the project’s most vocal cheerleader in the Legislature, publicly broached the idea of a V.C. Summer restart.
“He came out on the stage after the breakout sessions and said, ‘We’re all talking around this opportunity. We need to talk about this opportunity,’” Bunch said.
Those remarks set into motion a chain of events: a scouting trip by a state advisory group to see the condition of the unfinished reactors, Santee Cooper putting them on the market, Gov. Henry McMaster’s calls for a “nuclear renaissance,” legislation supporting the effort, and now a pending deal for the sale.
A nuclear history
Whispers about rebooting V.C. Summer’s expansion had begun a year earlier, Bunch said, as tech giants and major manufacturers looked for sources of low-to-no carbon power. Nuclear became the answer.
South Carolina’s four nuclear power plants already supply 55% of the state’s total electricity and the state is the third-largest producer of nuclear power in the nation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration...
These reactors are AP1000s, the type built at Vogtle in Georgia. Completing their construction will help to sustain the infrastructure and learnings from the construction of those reactors. Of the 30 billion dollar cost of the two reactors, 70% was for the first reactor, and 30% for the second, because what was learned in construction of the first was applied for the second.
It is notable that even in deep red South Carolina, the article makes the point, which I bolded, that the plants will produce low carbon energy.
The article makes a statement that there are plans to built 10 AP1000s in North America. That, of course, would be a great outcome.
Have a nice week.
Somehow, I often end up playing Santa Claus. The first time, was when my oldest son was four, and in preschool.
No one else could do it.
I got a lot of horn honking and waving on the drive over to the preschool suited up.
My wife and I wondered if he'd recognize me.
He didn't at first, but then said, "Is that you Dad?"
"Shhhh." I said, "I'm helping Santa out, as he couldn't get here because of a problem at the toy factory. It's taken care of, but he couldn't get down here fast enough."
He bought it.
He believed in Santa until he was about 10, whereupon he wanted to be in on the secret about which his little brother didn't know, helping to distribute the gifts under the tree while his brother was sleeping.
For the last 10 years, I've been Santa on the job for the company Christmas Party. (The majority of people with whom I work are Hindus.) It's a perk of being old, fat, and grey with the remaining hair.
Nobody uses my name all morning. I'm "Santa" to everyone. Everyone wants their picture taken with me.
Don't kid yourselves. Adults get into as much as kids.
I'm kind of tired of doing it, but can't get out of it. It's now a tradition.
So I just finished (finally) Jackson's book "France on Trial" and am moving to Elkins "A Legacy of Violence."
"France on Trial" is about the treason trial of Marshal Petain, the oldest French "Head of State" ever of the Vichy regime, a puppet state of Nazi Germany after the French defeat in 1940.
The former World War I hero, for his defense at Verdun, was convicted of treason and sentenced to death, although the sentence was not carried out. He lived his life out on an island off the French coast, a sort of St. Helena island on which Napoleon died (perhaps poisoned).
Reading about an oldest head of State tried and convicted of treason and sentenced to death is sort of, um, uplifting in these times.
The book was extremely well written, and described in detail the trial, what was covered and what was ignored (Vichy participation in the murder of French and refugee Jews), and in a final segment, how Petain's memory has played a role in the development of an extreme right wing in France right up to the modern day.
Now I'm moving on to "A Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire," by Caroline Elkins.
From the Guardian Review:
When Elkins’s book came out, her findings – partly based on the testimony of Kikuyu survivors – were widely dismissed as, at best, exaggerations by a generation of historians wedded to stubborn ideas of Britain’s “enlightened” and “benign empire”. Her history was dramatically vindicated, however, when an unknown cache of 240,000 top secret colonial files, removed from Nairobi at the time of Kenyan independence in 1963, were disclosed on the eve of the 2011 trial. The files had been stored in a high security foreign office depository at Hanslope Park, near Northampton. At the time of that high court victory, Elkins noted that she had for years put on hold a wider inquiry into the methods of British colonial governance in the years after the second world war, in order to substantiate the survivors’ case, research that would now be illuminated by the fact that the secret document store also held “lost” records from 37 other former colonies. She was both vindicated and outraged by the discovery: “After all these years of being roasted over the coals, they’ve been sitting on the evidence? Are you frickin’ kidding me? This almost destroyed my career.”
This book, a decade on, is that wider history that Elkins had postponed. Partly resting on the Hanslope Park files, it argues that the sadistic methods that marked the last acts of empire in Kenya were not an anomalous aberration but learned behaviours of imperial power...
It's a long thick book, and I can only devote a few hours a week to read history, so it will probably take longer than it took to finish - cover to cover, something I don't always do - than "France on Trial."
Still, we need to understand these things, built on racism and cruelty more than ever in these times of the reign of American racism and cruelty.
I'm not dead yet, and I want to die understanding as much as I can fit into one life.
I'm taking a brief vacation and am reading my son's thesis proposal for his Ph.D.
The proposal actually reads better than some of the final theses I've read; I read a lot of them too.
It's a nuclear materials science research document.
What is interesting is my realization that the little brat is a damned good writer besides being a pretty good scientist as well. I actually didn't realize that, but should have, since he won some awards in high school for writing.
I previously looked at his power point slides, and thought that they were way over my head, but in reading the proposal, I now understand what he's doing. (We have discussed some points during his weekly calls.)
I have told him that I plan to attend his defense when it comes. (He knows I'll ask loaded questions, and the preview will lead me to be locked and loaded.)
He's been advised by his committee to narrow his focus, and also to publish some of his data. I told him to keep the parts he cuts in his head, but of course, it won't get out of his head.
I'm a pretty proud old man.
A consortium of Midwest utilities consider a new nuclear build in Nebraska.
Utility consortium looks to Nebraska new buildFour public power utilities - Lincoln Electric System, Nebraska Public Power District, Omaha Public Power District and Grand River Dam Authority - have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to form the consortium, which will be coordinated by a steering committee led by Nebraska Public Power District. It will focus on feasibility studies, site evaluations and technology assessments for between 1,000 and 2,000 MW of new nuclear capacity including small modular reactors (SMRs). All four utilities are members of the Southwest Power Pool, a regional transmission organisation covering 14 states which are part of the USA's Eastern Interconnection grid.
Each utility will fund its own early-stage work. Any future steps, such as investment, permitting or construction, would follow public engagement and each utility's independent board approval process, the consortium said.
Nebraska Public Power District - a publicly owned utility and a political subdivision of the State of Nebraska - already operates the single-unit Cooper, Nebraska's only currently operating nuclear power plant, and is working on a nuclear feasibility siting study funded through the Nebraska Legislature and the Nebraska Department of Economic Development to identify sites that have the potential to host SMRs. The consortium is not connected to that study, but said it will utilise the results during the evaluation and planning process...
There is a meme that runs around that nuclear energy is "too expensive," the unstated but real corollary being that the destruction of the planetary atmosphere is not "too expensive," since nuclear energy is the only available tool to ameliorate said destruction.
The United States recently added, as an outgrowth of the Obama era Department of Energy policy, two reactors at the Vogtle Georgia plant, units 3 and 4.. Seventy percent of the costs was connected with unit 3, and, based on experience with building that unit, only 30% was connected with Unit four, since Unit 3 suffered from FOAKE (first of a kind engineering) costs. The reactors were API 1000's.
Unfortunately, the experience of building 3 and 4 did not result in additional builds, because of insipid whining about the costs, roughly 30 billion dollars when all was said and done. However, what was not pointed out was that the two Vogtle reactors will likely be operating at the dawn of the 22nd century, nearly half a century after every bit of fossil fuel dependent so called "renewable energy" infrastructure now existing will have become landfill.
A nuclear power plant is a gift to future generations. The real problem with building them is bourgeois selfishness, contempt for future generations that dominates American life and in many cases, life elsewhere. Culturally, we couldn't care less about the future, and it shows.
History will not forgive us, nor should it.
I just reviewed the slides my son gave for his Ph.D. proposal, and excerpted his paper on the topic.
It's way over my head.
That makes me a happy father; my son's work is way over my head.
It's all one can ever hope for, a son going far beyond himself.
Papers by Chinese Authors in American Scientific Journals Are Beginning to Use Chinese Currency in Lieu of Dollars.
My son has been visiting us for the Thanksgiving holidays. We've had some wonderful conversations; as he is leaving today, as we observe the collapse of the United States, I asked if he has been keeping up on his foreign languages, notably his Chinese, as we agreed China will dominate the world future previously dominated by the United States.
(He says he is.)
I came across today this paper: Real-World Usage, Emissions, and Costs of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Truck Fleets Hao Lin, Pei Zhao, Fang Wang, Yiling Xiong, Weinan He, Limiao Zhang, Ye Wu, Jiming Hao, and Shaojun Zhang Environmental Science & Technology 2025 59 (46), 24755-24766.
The paper discusses financial (and environmental) cost. In most such papers I've read over many years, when economic costs are discussed, including papers by Chinese authors working in China, the dollar is the default reference currency. In this paper that is no longer true. The costs are given in CNY (Chinese Yuan).
It's part of the process of the collapse of the Untied States after the toxic ascendancy of the orange pedophile.
I advise young people to learn Chinese. They'll need it.
It's free fall folks.
History will not forgive us, nor should it.
Canada to Refurbish Pickering Nuclear Reactors 5, 6, 7, and 8.
The announcement was just made
OPG Cleared to Refurbish Pickering Reactors in Overhaul Expected to Support Thousands of Jobs
From the text:
The province has given approval for Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to refurbish four CANDU reactors at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, a project aimed at extending the plant’s lifespan and reinforcing the province’s energy stability.
Energy and Mines Minister Stephen Lecce called the station one of the world’s strongest-performing nuclear facilities and said renewing it supports the government’s broader plan to strengthen the workforce and protect Ontario’s economy. He noted that keeping the project’s spending largely within the country—90 per cent, according to the government—helps bolster the Canadian supply chain.
The plan focuses on the Pickering “B” units, numbered 5 through 8. Pending final approval from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, OPG expects to start the execution phase in early 2027. Work is projected to wrap up by the mid-2030s. When complete, the station’s output is expected to reach roughly 2,200 megawatts, enough to power about 2.2 million homes.
Job creation is a major component of the project: about 30,500 positions are expected during the refurbishment, with another 6,700 roles supported during ongoing operations. The total budget is $26.8 billion, and OPG estimates that the project and continued operations will add $41.6 billion to Canada’s GDP. As part of its commitments, OPG will invest $100 million with Indigenous-owned companies over the course of the refurbishment.
The upgrade is also expected to secure long-term production of Cobalt-60, a medical isotope widely used in cancer therapy and the sterilization of medical tools and food products...
The refurbishment is designed to extend the lifetime of the reactors until the 2070's. Construction of the reactors, which involved a fraction of the cost of the refurbishment, began in the 1970's. The four reactors were connected to the grid between 1982 and 1986.
World Nuclear Database Canada.
There are many media articles besides this one on the topic, including the usual claptrap from ersatz "environmentalists" who say the reactors are not necessary because so called "renewable energy" is so great. There's the usual chanting about cost, waste, danger, blah, blah, blah, although this set couldn't give a rat's ass about dangerous fossil fuel waste, which has left the planet in flames, fossil fuel accidents which kill so frequently that they escape notice, the death toll from air pollution, nor, for that matter the incalculable cost of extreme global heating.
Meanwhile, on burning planet Earth, despite the greatness of so called "renewable energy," Ontario is increasingly reliant on dangerous natural gas for electrical power.
The. "Environmentalists." Couldn't. Care. Less.
Note the quotation marks. I consider myself an environmentalist which is why I support nuclear energy. I do not consider antinukes environmentalists.
The "renewable energy is great" crowd never carries on like this when people build gas plants. They couldn't give a flying a fuck about fossil fuels, never have, never will.
Refurbishing the reactors will cost a lot of money, yes, although Canada has significant experience with this practice from the recent refurbishment of the Darlington and Bruce reactors, more or less on time and on budget. The refurbished reactors represent gifts to the future generations we have screwed with our indifference to fossil fuels.
The CANDU is a heavy water reactor which I believe can play a great role in the nuclear fuel cycle with ternary fuels containing a mixture of plutonium, depleted or once through uranium, and thorium, extending the fuel burn up, breeding enriched fuels, efficiency and nonproliferation value. As far as I know, this is not planned, although historically there was much discussion of the DUPIC cycle, something of a similar idea, but not including the isolation of fission products.
Have a happy Thanksgiving.
Tomorrow will be the 50th anniversary of my mother's death.
It was on a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, as it is in 2025. I think my father had a hamburger for Thanksgiving; I may have had a peanut and jelly sandwich. I spent the day before arranging the funeral.
For all 50 years, any time I want, and often when I don't want, I can be in that hospital room, watching her gasp for air, paralyzed, turning blue, hoping it would just end. Eventually it did. I didn't even have the strength to cry.
As I had spent months watching her die, pretty much full time; I was deformed for sometime thereafter by the whole thing.
That's what I'm thankful for, on Thanksgiving. I survived. My father survived.
No, it's better than that, far better.
It turns out that I didn't merely survive:
I was reformed almost exactly 10 years later, when I married my wife in a tacky chapel in Lake Tahoe during a blizzard with a drunk "preacher" (or whatever), my bride wearing a brace on her leg from a skiing accident, holding plastic flowers because there was no way for real flowers to get in, before a subdued Thanksgiving/wedding dinner, since many restaurants were closed for the storm.
Almost unexpectedly, there was this incredible joy, almost exactly ten years later: Entering that tacky wedding chapel with that very beautiful young woman with a great sense of humor, a fine mind, all that emotional generosity, all that kindness and tolerance, someone with whom I could and did grow old, sharing everything, the woman who'd be the mother of my sons, the real author of my real life, the life that matters.
I'm a lucky guy.
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