Innovative scalable nuclear power developing in Copenhagen

“Geopolitics” is not a word you routinely hear when interviewing deep-tech start-ups. Then again, Seaborg is not a routine start-up. Even by Innovation District Copenhagen-standards. This company, founded by alumni from University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, aims to make nuclear power production safe and modular enough to mass-produce in stack-able units.

Safety makes nuclear commercially viable

Seaborg is housed in Titangade, alongside the Woods office hotel and aims to put a so-called Molten Salt Reactor on the market in the start of the 2030ies. These reactors use the same uranium 235 fuel as current plants, but the fuel is dissolved in molten salt, and they are physically incapable of exploding or melting down. These two advantages open the door to a whole range of commercial possibilities.

The Light Water Reactors we see all over the world are huge one-off projects that can take over 10 years to construct. Our design is standardized, serially manufactured at a shipyard and placed on barges. Alongside a range of technical advantages this makes them faster and cheaper to build, so they don’t need the same level of financing. All this together means, that we will be able to mass-produce nuclear reactors about the size of train-cars and place a bunch of them on a barge for quick and simple deployment”: Rasmus Bjerngaard, Chief Business Officer, Seaborg.

Laws of physics. Laws of man

Molten salt reactors are not a new idea. In fact, an experimental reactor ran from 1965 to 69. They are a bit hard to make work though. The nuclear fuel is embedded in salt heated to its melting point. The salt is highly corrosive, so two of Seaborg’s areas of excellence are corrosion chemistry and material science, says Esben Klinkby, co-founder, Seaborg.

Research is in our company’s DNA and we understand what we need to do to solve the technical challenges we face. We know the laws of physics. The laws of man such as regulatory issues, funding and public perception, are less quantifiable, however”: Andreas Vigand Schofield, co-founder, Seaborg.

A predictable source of large amounts of energy

Man-made climate change is forcing a transition away from energy production based on fossil fuels. Wind, solar and hydro-electrics are a fine alternative for some uses, but power-hungry industries such as steel, chemicals, and more recently, artificial intelligence need sources that provide massive amounts of energy at predictable times.

Nuclear power is the only established green and scalable source of power that works constantly 24/7 year-round. We need this baseload power to replace fossil fuels, both for electricity and for the approximately 80% of the world’s energy that is non-electric such as industrial steam and heating. Solar and wind power are great cheap compliments some places in the world but not for non-electrical applications, and integration of solar and wind becomes expensive when their percentage of the grid’s capacity increases because they require storage and connection infrastructure.”: Eirik Eide Pettersen, co-founder, Seaborg.

Replacing coal-fired electricity plants

The floating power-plants that Seaborg are developing could be a highly practical replacement for the world’s 2,433 coalfired electricity plants. The power modules will be placed on barges. Four on a barge will match the energy output of a coalfired plant and plug right into existing infrastructure. The floating power plant is being developed through a consortium with one of the world’s leading shipyards, Samsung Heavy Industries, and Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP), while nuclear reactor R&D is done in Denmark.

We don’t have nuclear power in Denmark, so a lot of our colleagues come from abroad. We have found that our location centrally in Innovation District Copenhagen helps us when it comes to recruiting hard-to-find highly skilled co-workers. Especially the younger engineers have a very positive view of Copenhagen”: Rasmus Bjerngaard, Chief business Officer, Seaborg.

Nuclear for security, climate and predictability

Keeping R&D skills in Denmark is just one of many subjects, where Bjerngaard uses the words “geopolitics”. He feels strongly that Europe, including Denmark, needs to build and retain know-how on nuclear energy production for energy security, climate and geopolitical reasons. To ensure this, Seaborg is constantly collaborating with researchers and students from University of Copenhagen, Danish Technical University and the National Laboratory Risø.

Innovative start-ups are completely dependent on being able to attract the right staff. I am enormously pleased, that Seaborg finds co-creators among the districts’ 40,000 students and staff and even more so, that they can use their location as a selling point when they hire foreign talent”: Andreas Blohm Graversen, Innovation District Copenhagen and COO for innovation, University of Copenhagen.

A crucial element in the green transition

Once the laws of man and physics have been reconciled, Seaborg will be able to launch dozens and later hundreds of molten-salt based nuclear power barges every year enabling an unprecedented increase in zero-emission power. They see this as a major boost to the green transition and crucial element in terms of energy security and geopolitics.