Per Peterson has a modular molten salt nuclear reactor design in the US and is also working with China's molten salt nuclear reactor program

Per Peterson and his co-authors believe that the way forward for the US nuclear industry is to use new nuclear reactor designs with passive safety and modular construction. This will make nuclear power both cheaper and safer.

Per Peterson is an expert on molten salt nuclear reactors and other nuclear reactor designs and technology.

Per Peterson, the Floyd Professor of Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley, is working with America’s national energy laboratories on the development of breakthrough nuclear technologies that are safer, less expensive, and more efficient and flexible than current technologies. Peterson’s early research was critical to the development of passive safety systems adopted in new reactors currently being built in the United States and China, and he is a co-inventor of fluoride-salt cooled high-temperature reactor technology now being developed in the United States and China. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu appointed Peterson to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in 2010.

Per Peterson has a design for a molten salt-cooled reactor that couples to a conventional General Electric (GE) gas turbine. Our Mk1 reactor design can generate 100 megawatts (MWe) of baseload nuclear power, but can also be co-fired with gas to rapidly adjust power output between 100 MWe and 240 MWe. The ability to rapidly adjust power output helps balance variability in the grid and is thus attractive to grid operators. And because the turbine remains “hot and spinning,” efficiency losses to provide peaking and spinning reserve services are low. The thermal efficiency of our design in converting peaking fuel into electricity is 66 percent, compared to about 60 percent for today’s best combined-cycle natural gas-fired power plants. To top things off, our molten salt design is much more compact than other advanced reactor designs. We believe it offers one of the most cost-competitive alternatives to conventional water-cooled reactors.

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