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Natrium employs hot, liquid sodium as a coolant, and dispenses with the moderator entirely. This is another idea that dates back to the 1950s, but one which has never been widely deployed. Yet sodium offers several advantages as a coolant, says Chris Levesque, TerraPower's boss. The liquid sodium's high temperature—around 500°C— makes the reactor more efficient. At the same time, liquid sodium is much less corrosive to pipes than hot water. And though the water in LWRS is pumped through at high pressure, Natrium is designed to operate at close to atmospheric pressure. That means pipes, containment buildings and the like can be less beefy without affecting safety. TerraPower reckons its reactor needs only 20% of the concrete required by an LWR of equivalent power, which helps keep down costs.
钠采用热的液态钠作为冷却剂，完全省去了慢化剂。这是另一个可以追溯到20世纪50年代的想法，但从未被广泛应用。然而，泰拉能源的老板克里斯·莱韦斯克说，钠作为一种冷却剂有几个优点。液态钠的高温——大约500°C——能够使反应器更加有效。与此同时，液态钠对管道的腐蚀性要比热水小得多。虽然LWRS中的水是在高压下泵入的，但钠的设计是在接近大气压力的情况下运行。这意味着管道、安全壳建筑等可以在不影响安全的情况下变得不那么坚固。泰拉能源估计，同等功率下，它的反应堆只需要LWR所需混凝土的20%，这有助于降低成本。
The firm's second big idea is its moltensalt energy-storage system. Inspiration for this came from the solar-power industry, says Mr Levesque. Solar-thermal systems (in contradistinction to the more familiar photovoltaic ones that generate electricity directly) have, for several years, used similar tanks to store excess solar energy harvested during the day. In Natrium's case, the sodium coolant transfers heat from the reactor into the molten-salt tanks. A separate set of pipes then removes heat from the tanks and uses it to produce electricity.
该公司的第二大创意是它的熔盐储能系统。莱韦斯克先生说，其灵感来自太阳能行业。多年来，太阳能热系统(与更常见的直接发电的光伏系统相比)一直使用类似的水箱来储存白天收集的多余太阳能。在钠的例子中，钠冷却剂将热量从反应堆转移到熔盐槽中。然后，一组独立的管道从储罐中除去热量，并利用它来发电。
TerraPower hopes this arrangement will let the new reactor ramp its power out-put up and down, depending on the price of electricity. This is something that LWRS struggle to do. The firm's demonstration plant will usually produce 345 megawatts (MW) of electrical power. But by releasing the energy stored in the molten-salt tanks, it will be able to boost that to 500mw for over five-and-a-half hours. This should be a useful trick as power grids fill up with wind and solar farms that are likely to cause power prices to fluctuate more than they do at present. Combined with lower construction costs, TerraPower hopes such agility will make its plant more economically attractive than older designs.
泰拉能源希望这种安排能让新反应堆根据电力价格的不同，使其电力输出上下波动。这是LWRS努力去做的事情。该公司的示范工厂通常会产生345兆瓦的电力。但是通过释放储存在熔盐罐里的能量，它将能够将能量提高到500兆瓦，持续超过五个半小时。这应该是一个有用的技巧，因为电网与风力和太阳能发电厂连接起来很可能导致电力价格比目前波动更多。再加上较低的建设成本，泰拉能源希望这种灵活性将使其工厂比旧的设计更具经济吸引力。
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