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No, Pressured Water Reactors (LPWRs) are large, expensive, dangerous, etc. Molten Salt Reactors, especially Thorium Molten Salt Reactors (e.g. LFTR) are much mu
by cromwellian 6y ago
No, Pressured Water Reactors (LPWRs) are large, expensive, dangerous, etc. Molten Salt Reactors, especially Thorium Molten Salt Reactors (e.g. LFTR) are much much smaller and passively safe.
What you're missing is that cost scales with volume. If you use a technology that allows you to reduce your reactor size by a linear factor of 2, you reduce its reduce volume and cost by a factor of 8.
Likewise, while ITER is uber expensive like large PWRs, ARC is 10 times smaller, and a factor of 30 times or more cheaper. It's also not as complex as some fission reactors, the most complex elements being the HTS magnets and the blanket.
This is the problem with ITER and PWRs, they have convinced the public that nuclear energy is inherently dangerous and expensive and impossible to make substantially safer, cleaner, and cheaper, but that is false.
You should look up at the history of LPWRs vs MSRs from the guy who invented them. There's a documentary on the Oak Ridge Molten Salt Reactor experiment. He himself thought LPWRs were too dangerous requiring ginormous size and shielding, but the US government and cronies, preferred LPWRs, and so MSRs were abandoned, despite successful trials.
- pfdietz 6y agoThe Molten Salt Reactor designs I have seen have lower volumetric power density than PWRs. The MSRE reactor had a volumetric power density of 2 MW/m^3, a factor of 10 lower than a commercial PWR (counting the volume of the entire primary reactor vessel; the power density in the core of a PWR is a factor of 5 higher than that.) Of course that was an experiment, but look at something like Moltex's design and the power density is still lower than a PWR, last I looked. > Likewise, while ITER is uber expensive like large PWRs, ARC is 10 times smaller, and a factor of 30 times or more cheaper. The ARC design is smaller than ITER, but it's still very much lower (a factor of 40) in power density than a fission reactor.
- cromwellian 6y agoThe power density isn't the only variable that matters. The difference doesn't matter if the cost to build a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor is much lower, especially in terms of safety and size. MSR's don't need enormous containment vessels, they also reprocess fuel. Here's some links showing power densities inline with PWRs, or greater: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2013/12/molten-salt-reactor-about-50-times.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2013/12/molten-salt-reactor-ab... "Extrapolating from other liquid-to-liquid heat exchangers, roughly 150 MW/m3 is a practical upper limit to the power density of a primary-to-intermediate salt heat exchanger. For comparison, pressurized-water reactor core power density is ~110 MW/m3." https://info.ornl.gov/sites/publications/files/Pub29596.pdf https://info.ornl.gov/sites/publications/files/Pub29596.pdf