Find companies by reactor type

Every organisation in the record is tagged with one or more approaches: the kind of machine it builds, such as a tokamak (a ring-shaped magnetic fusion machine) or a sodium-cooled fast reactor. It is also tagged with a sector: fusion, fission, fuel cycle or supply chain. Four pages use these tags.

The technology pages

/technology/ lists every approach the record uses, in two trees: fusion and fission. Each approach has a one-paragraph definition and three counts: companies, devices and reactor designs.

The trees nest. Spherical tokamaks sit under tokamaks, and tokamaks sit under magnetic confinement. A count on a broad approach includes everything beneath it, so the magnetic confinement count includes both tokamaks and spherical tokamaks.

Each approach links to its own page at /technology/<name>/, for example /technology/tokamak/. That page lists the companies, laboratories and programmes, devices and reactor designs tagged with the approach, and the measurements held for those devices.

The fusion and fission trees each link to an overview page. /fusion/ lists the fusion approaches, companies and devices. /fission/ lists the fission approaches and companies, and groups reactor designs by size and by licensing stage. These pages are lists; they have no filter controls.

Small modular reactors and microreactors

“Small modular reactor” describes a size, not a technology. A small modular water-cooled reactor and a small modular molten salt reactor work in completely different ways. So size has its own page, /modular/, rather than a place in the technology tree.

The size class is worked out from the electrical output of one unit of a reactor design, measured in MWe (megawatts of electricity), as the developer states it. Sources do not always say whether that figure is net or gross, so the site does not assume either. Up to 10 MWe is a microreactor. Above 10 and up to 300 MWe is a small modular reactor. Above 300 MWe is a large reactor. The page lists small modular reactor and microreactor designs, then designs whose output is not stated. Large designs are listed on /fission/. The class is calculated from the capacity figure we hold and is never typed in by hand. A design with no capacity figure is listed as “not stated”, never guessed.

Check whether a figure is per module or per plant. A plant of 12 modules is quoted at 12 times the module figure, and only the module figure decides the size class.

The companies directory

/companies/ shows every classified company as a card. Each card gives the country, founding year, a short description, the sectors and up to two approaches. Above the cards is a filter form with four controls:

• Search matches words in a company’s name, other names, short description and approach labels.
• Sector limits the list to Fission, Fuel cycle, Fusion or Supply chain.
• Country limits the list to one country.
• Reset clears all three.

A line under the form shows how many companies match the current filters.

The filters are saved in the page address as ?q=, ?sector= and ?country=. You can copy the address and share it. For example, /companies/?sector=Fission&country=CA opens the Canadian fission companies.

To find one reactor type, choose the sector first and then type the approach into Search. Search matches the short approach label that the record uses, so try both forms: “SFR” and “sodium”, “MSR” and “molten salt”, “FHR” and “salt-cooled”. Where the short label and the full name differ, the full name only matches if it also appears in the company’s description.

Laboratories, regulators and programmes are listed below the cards and are not affected by the filters. Organisations we have found but not yet classified are listed last, under Awaiting classification. They are left out of every sector and approach listing, because we have not yet established what they do.

Individual machines

To find machines rather than companies, use /devices/. Its filter form has Search (device or operator name), Approach and Status (for example operating, under construction or shut down). The table covers fusion devices with a published set of design dimensions. Devices without one are counted at the top of the page and have their own pages.

Coolant is not fuel

The most common classification error in advanced fission is mixing up the coolant with the fuel. A molten salt reactor dissolves its fuel in the salt. A fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor (FHR) uses solid fuel pellets and only uses the salt to carry heat away. Kairos Power builds the second kind. If a description says only “molten salt”, it has not told you which. /compare/molten-salt-vs-fhr/ sets the two side by side.

On a company page, the Technology line gives the full approach names and the Fuel line gives the fuel, as separate facts.

Sources

• Technology, Companies, Devices and Molten salt reactor vs fluoride salt-cooled reactor on this site