We have successfully closed our first financing round: It was fully subscribed to the planned extent. Private investors, most of them medium-sized entrepreneurs, gave close to seven million Canadian dollars.
Armin Huke, President & CTO, commented, “We are pleased to have received purely private funding for our company. This is a vote of confidence from the capital market that has exceeded our expectations.”
With the funds raised, we intend to strengthen our staff and build our own premises in order to advance the development of our reactor to series maturity. This includes building up laboratory capacity as well as cooperating with renowned research institutes to prepare an initial safety analysis in accordance with international regulatory standards. In particular, very rarely occurring operating conditions will be investigated in detail using mathematical models. The results will be incorporated into the upcoming licensing procedure. CEO Götz Ruprecht comments: “Our own simulation calculations have already shown that the Dual Fluid Reactor is feasible and inherently safe. Now it’s a matter of preparing the licensing process and starting the practical work.”
Also part of the overall concept is a nuclear recycling plant that can efficiently separate so-called nuclear waste by type. In combination with the Dual Fluid Reactor, this will make a geological repository superfluous. With the existing nuclear waste alone, Dual Fluid could supply several industrialized countries with electricity for hundreds of years.
The next financing round is planned in one and a half to two years and will also be aimed at institutional investors.
Foto: © Adobestock / howtogoto
Dual Fluid Energy Inc. is now a Canadian company. Many practical reasons convinced us – including little bureaucracy, a highly educated population, and a government that intends to support small modular reactors (SMRs) in the future. By establishing the company, we are also starting a new chapter internally: In accordance with Canadian corporate law, we have reorganized our management team.
Canada is no longer just a perfect place for nature and wilderness lovers. More and more founders are choosing the country as a base because they find favorable conditions there. So do we: The Canadian government appreciates and promotes nuclear power as a technology of the future. Most of the population sees nuclear power as an opportunity, and the country is very experienced in nuclear technology. Last but not least, there is also an internationally recognized nuclear licensing authority. In short, everything we need is there.
According to the Canadian regulations, our company is now headed by a Board of Directors:
Dr. Armin Huke, Director, Chairman of the Board, visionary: studied physics because he was fascinated by energy and power plants from an early age. Together with Götz Ruprecht and Ahmed Hussein, he designed the Dual Fluid Reactor to provide medical isotopes – but soon realized its true potential: to exploit the possibilities of nuclear fission through a radically efficiency-optimized design. Armin Huke leads and supports the management team as President and CTO (Chief Technology Officer).
Dr. Götz Ruprecht, Director, pragmatist: Brings research experience from nuclear TRIUMF National Lab (Canada). Focuses on the next stage as well as the big picture, balances and integrates. Götz Ruprecht is also CEO (Chief Executive Officer).
Prof. em. Ahmed Hussein, Director and senior scientific expert: Dedicated his professional life to nuclear and particle physics, including at TRIUMF National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) and as the founding Chair of the Physics Department at the University of Northern British Columbia. He is a Canadian citizen.
Dr. Titus Gebel, Director, lawyer, investor and action taker: His experience in company founding and management brings a wide and valuable range of experience in business start-up and management to the team.
The day-to-day business is run by the management team – in addition to Götz Ruprecht and Armin Huke these are: Dr. Björn Peters as CFO (Chief Finance Officer) and Dipl.-Ing. Stephan Gottlieb as COO (Chief Operations Officer). Please find the whole team here.
At the moment we are preparing the first round of financing. With the funds raised, we want to commission an internationally renowned institute to conduct a safety analysis and begin practical tests. And because the question is sure to come up: The Canadian legal form of our company does not preclude us from using Germany as a base for the next future. Maybe even for longer, if favorable conditions arise. If not, we have a plan B, and it’s called Canada.
When Greenpeace commissions a study on the costs of nuclear power from a player in the eco-scene, the result is actually clear: nuclear power will appear as expensive and useless as possible in it. If it is delivered as desired, one has an apparently independent source that can be conveniently quoted. Journalists are also happy about this.
The catch: if someone does get the idea to do the math, it becomes embarrassing. This was the case recently with the study “Societal Costs of Nuclear Power in Germany,” in which the Forum for Ecosocial Market Economy (FÖS) calculated the societal costs of nuclear power on behalf of Greenpeace. The result is a dizzying sum of one trillion (1000 billion) euros.
Björn Peters, a physicist and expert on power plant financing, and his co-author Hans Peter Musahl, a lawyer and tax consultant, reviewed the study and found: The amount only comes about because the FÖS makes the most adventurous assumptions and throws professional principles overboard. Exemplary for the tricks with which the FÖS makes nuclear power expensive are the insurance and provision tricks.
For example, the FÖS claims that taxpayers have been missing out on revenue for decades – by not taxing the capital that power plant operators had set aside for the dismantling of their plants. This is preposterous because: Every company, regardless of whether it operates nuclear power plants, wind power or other facilities, is required by law to take care of dismantling itself and to set aside provisions for this purpose. These provisions are basically debts on the balance sheet and therefore do not have to be taxed – by anyone. Why the FÖS believes that the operators of nuclear power plants must make an exception here remains its secret. In any case, at this point it constructs costs in the form of lost revenues of €68 billion – out of sheer nothingness.
So what drove the cost of €150 billion to a trillion within 10 years, between the first and second FÖS investigations? For the most part, it goes back to a trick intended to represent the fictitious costs of nuclear accidents. The authors arbitrarily claim a damage sum of 348 to 533 billion euros, which is not covered by insurance. In the event of damage, therefore, society would have to be liable for this sum. This is grossly misleading, because this amount would cover several Chernobyl events at once. In fact, however, such events cannot occur at all in German nuclear power plants due to their design. The worst that could happen here – with a very low probability – would be a core meltdown with destruction of the reactor core. Radioactivity would not escape, however, thanks to the containment.
Of course, all German nuclear power plants are and were insured at all times – against all technically conceivable damage. But not against physically impossible damage, which is simply claimed. The insurance premiums are therefore in the low double-digit millions per power plant and year. They are included in the price of electricity.
Peters and Musahl impressively show how the FÖS ignores basic knowledge of economics and business administration, environmental economics, energy economics and nuclear technology when it serves the higher purpose of making nuclear power appear as expensive and useless as possible.
Speaking of the higher purpose, the FÖS of course does not mention the benefits of nuclear power. If our nuclear power had been generated by coal from the 1950s to today, there would have been about 137,000 premature deaths from air pollution in Germany as a result.
Nuclear power has saved many millions of tons of air pollutants and CO₂ for many decades. At the same time, it has depressed average exchange prices for electricity. If you want, you can convert that into money: The social benefit of nuclear energy is then in the high triple-digit billions, between 400 and 800 billion euros.
Here is the review in the magazine atw in German. This text was published first at Nukearia e.V.
Foto: © Marco Scisetti / Adobestock
Of course there is a reason why we have erased the reactor from our name. We are adressing a public that for decades has only heard and read about the risks of nuclear power: how uncontrollable it is, how durable the residuals are, how dangerous the radiation is. (The fact that many of the fears are irrational should not be further discussed here). So what do perfectly normal people think of when they hear the word reactor? Of the possibilities that modern nuclear technology offers? Or of Chernobyl, nuclear meltdown and evacuations?
One thing is certain: nuclear power has an image problem. Anyone who wants to bring nuclear technology back after endless discussions of fear in the past will soon realize that it is not enough to rely solely on the power of the better argument. You have to find a new language and new images. Projects like atomic_trends by David Watson show how this can be done. His images of breathtaking nature and cool tech visions clearly show what nuclear power can stand for: The energy of the future, which preserves nature and fulfills humanity’s dreams. Watson has understood the power of symbols and brilliantly implemented it in the visualizations of his “Nuclear Dream Factory”. In this way, he gives nuclear power a completely new, eco-modern look that immediately inspires. (This is also where the above picture comes from – to be found here).
That’s what it’s all about for us too. We want to show nuclear power for what it is today: a huge opportunity to provide clean and cheap energy for seven billion people. It protects nature like no other energy source. This is due to its highly concentrated fuel, which is a million times denser than coal. In this way we can preserve living spaces and at the same time make energy-intensive future technologies a reality.
New nuclear power expands the opportunities: nuclear waste is being turned into electricity in fast reactors – today already. Next-generation reactors, which would do this much more efficiently, could generate energy from it for centuries without extracting a single gram of uranium. Because nuclear power is as low-emission as wind power, we would meet the emission targets – despite air-conditioned homes, more and more electronic gadgets and data centers. New nuclear technology has the potential to decarbonize our entire lives – by using process heat to produce petroleum-free fuels. Have we forgotten anything else? By the way: Nuclear fuels last for hundreds of millions of years thanks to the economical use of resources with Dual Fluid technology. Whether there will still be people who might be afraid of reactors then is another question.
© atomic_trends / David J. Watson
The US wants to be a nuclear nation again: The government’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program recently selected two companies to receive generous financial support. The companies Terra Power and X-Energy are to build two different prototypes within seven years, which will supply reliable and shelf-ready electricity. National research institutions are to help with their development. “New nuclear energy is paramount to our clean energy strategy,” said energy secretary Dan Brouilette.
The companies were awarded funding because the jury judged their plans to be feasible, swiftly realisable and competitive. The designs differ fundamentally from most modern-day reactors. There the energy of nuclear fission is used to heat water that circulates through the core to transport heat to the non-reactor unit of the plant. This works best when the water is pressurised. In the non-reactor unit the heat produces steam, which in turn drives turbines to generate electricity.
Instead of water, the TerraPower sodium reactor uses molten sodium as a coolant. Since sodium has a higher boiling temperature than water, the coolant would not have to be pressurised. With this challenging concept TerraPower hopes to reduce the plant’s complexity and cost. In contrast, the X-Energy design uses pressurised helium gas for cooling, which enables a high operating temperature of 750 °C. There are no fuel rods in the reactor core, but graphite “pebbles” containing uranium. Both principles might seem familiar to Germans: They have already been implemented in Germany before. So the selected designs are nothing new, and they have well known disadvantages: Sodium reactors require elaborate safety engineering because the handling of sodium is complex. Pebble bed reactors have a low power density.
Nevertheless: “The fact that the largest western democracy is once again turning to nuclear technology is a very important signal – even if the technologies being funded are not really new,” says Björn Peters, CFO of Dual Fluid. After all, the Department of Energy has announced that a further 50 billion dollars will be used to promote real innovations – i.e. reactors that has only existed as concepts so far. The companies that will benefit are to be announced in December.
Joe Biden also wants to hold on to nuclear power: By 2050, the American power grid is to become completely emission-free, for which he wants to use all low-carbon technologies. In his “Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice”, Biden promises to identify the nuclear power of the future – and explicitly mentions small modular reactors (SMR) as an option.
Foto: © fpic/Adobestock
This is possible thanks to a globally unique reactor design based on two circulating fluids. As a result, any fissile material can be recycled very efficiently – from thorium or natural uranium to nuclear waste. “Nuclear waste is a highly concentrated recyclable material that we should definitely put to use,” says Armin Huke, Managing Director of Dual Fluid.
For recycling, the finely ground waste is transformed into liquid salt form and then separated by distillation (partitioning). The pure elements generated by this means are fed into the fuel cycle. In the reactor core, they are converted into fissile material (transmutation) and fully utilised – for the generation of energy or heat. This recycling process would even be profitable due to the utilisation of the energy generated – in contrast to permanent storage which is expensive and produces no benefits whatsoever. The remaining ashes would subside after a few hundred years. A simple interim repository would therefore suffice for storage.
Feasibility studies are well advanced, also thanks to academic cooperations with TU Munich and Szczecin University. “No fundamental questions are left unanswered anymore,” says Götz Ruprecht, head of research at Dual Fluid. As soon as the financing is in place, component tests in the laboratory can follow. This step will cost around 40 million euros. About 10 billion euros would be needed until a prototype is built, which could still be realised within this decade. “This sounds like a huge amount – but compared to the well over 20 billion that Germany spends on the transition to solar and wind energy each year, it is small,” says Götz Ruprecht. As the state is unlikely to contribute at present, Dual Fluid will soon found a holding company.
Why liquid nuclear technology?
Modern-day reactors are very inefficient: They can only extract one per cent of energy from natural uranium, which undergoes an energy-intensive mining and refining process. The remaining 99 per cent needs to be disposed of at a high cost. Modern liquid nuclear reactors, which are being developed by several companies worldwide, can utilise nuclear fuel fully and without long-lasting wastes. Liquid nuclear technology started with the Oak Ridge reactor in the USA, which was operated successfully in the 1960s. Dual Fluid has the only concept that decisively surpasses its historical predecessor both in function and efficiency. The company holds a patent on this – the first for a reactor design since the 1960s.
By the middle of the century, we could reduce our emissions to near zero: New nuclear can completely decarbonise our economy – because it provides not only energy but also fuels and heat, says Dr. Götz Ruprecht, CTO at Dual Fluid, in a video interview. Switch on subtitles!
Foto: © eakarat / Adobestock
Germany is again looking for a final repository – will it work this time? The good news: New nuclear technology makes a repository superfluous because it transforms nuclear waste into energy. Dr. Götz Ruprecht, inventor and CTO at Dual Fluid, explains in the video. Switch on subtitles!
Bild © Sondem / stock.adobe.com
In 2013 the documentary Pandora’s Promise caused a sensation: It portrayed young people who, in the interests of the climate and environment, had gone from opposing nuclear power to avidly embracing it. Today, this no longer seems odd: Politicians and journalists around the world are asking themselves how we can really lower our emissions – and what role nuclear energy can play in this. In particular, the “new” nuclear power of the so-called fourth generation is a game changer. It promises inherent safety and waste avoidance, which would render key anti-nuclear arguments obsolete.
And now the German press are also broaching the subject. It started with interviews with technology historian and pro-nuclear activist Anna Veronika Wendland in Der Spiegel and Cicero in spring 2019. In October Die Zeit followed suit with Rainer Klute, chairman of the Nuklearia association, who explained the opportunities and possibilities of new nuclear energy in a full-page article. The comment section went crazy. In November, Der Spiegel was brave enough to publish a multi-page article that was exclusively devoted to new nuclear energy and asked: “Is the German nuclear phase-out a mistake?” Since then, it’s as if the floodgates have been opened. In July, Anna Veronika Wendland demanded in Die Zeit: “Stop the nuclear phase-out”; a short time later the Focus headline ran: “Nuclear power, yes please!“. Focus also mentions Dual Fluid as protagonists of new nuclear power.
The new press coverage shows: Germany is not an island. Everywhere nuclear technology is making remarkable progress. Questioning the nuclear phase-out is therefore again an issue. And with good reason.
Click here to see the movie Pandora’s Promise by Robert Stone:
Bild © Sebastian / stock.adobe.com
Dual Fluid Company Presentation