Copenhagen Atomics
🇩🇰 Copenhagen, DK · Founded 2014 · Active
Copenhagen Atomics is a Danish company developing small, mass-manufactured molten-salt reactors, in which the fuel is carried in the molten salt itself. It was founded in 2014 by scientists and engineers around the Technical University of Denmark and has its headquarters and production facility at Kastrup, near Copenhagen. Its design is a thermal-spectrum breeder on the thorium fuel cycle, starting on plutonium separated from spent fuel. It has built full-scale non-nuclear prototypes, one tested with water and, in 2023, one with non-radioactive molten salt. It plans a critical experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, which in 2024 it scheduled for 2026 to 2027 and by mid-2026 had moved to no earlier than 2028.
- Sector
- Fission
- Technology
- Molten salt reactor
- Fuel
- Thorium
- Role
- Reactor developer
Terms
- Molten salt reactor
- Fuel DISSOLVED in the salt, which in most designs is fuel carrier and coolant at once. Distinct from a salt-cooled reactor with solid fuel; the two are often confused. Moderator, where one is used at all, is a separate design choice from the salt: thermal-spectrum MSRs are typically graphite-moderated, fast-spectrum MSRs carry no moderator.
- Thorium
- Thorium-232, which is fertile rather than fissile: after absorbing a neutron it becomes uranium-233 through two radioactive decays, the second taking about a month, and only then can it fission and sustain a chain reaction. A thorium reactor therefore needs a starting charge of fissile material. Thorium is about three times more abundant than uranium in the Earth's crust.
Designs
| Design | Developer | Approach | Electrical output per unit | Size class | Licensing stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copenhagen Atomics Waste Burner CA Waste Burner, Onion Core | Copenhagen Atomics | Molten salt reactor | Output not stated | Not classed | No milestone recorded |