3 ms·
What are the disclaimers for molten salt reactors?
by vlovich123 2y ago
What are the disclaimers for molten salt reactors?
- jeffbee 2y agoConsidering that there are no commercial-scale operating MSRs, I am guessing there are some pretty significant difficulties. Like graphite pebble reactors, molten salts must be perfectly desiccated, which is impossible to guarantee under Earth operating conditions, and nobody knows what kinds of materials to use for the salt containment, or how it might be changed by a few decades of operation.
- vlovich123 2y agoI believe it depends on the salt used and why a lot of research is looking at fluorine - floride salts don't dissolve in water and thus don't have the same risks. Another MSR design seeing a lot of attention is SSR which similarly doesn't use any chemically reactive materials. SSR is also interesting from a cost perspective as it's projected to cost half of a modern coal power station and almost a third that of a modern large scale nuclear construction putting it in line with solar plants that don't have batteries (i.e. much more cost effective).
- aidenn0 2y agoIf you can contain the highly corrosive, very hot, molten salts, then they are fairly safe, but you do need to guarantee that the path to the dump-tanks is undisturbed by whatever disaster is necessitating their use. A big non-safety disclaimer is that the proposed advantage of online refueling is still largely theoretical.
- EasyMark 2y agoNo one has built a large scale viable one yet because of the extremely caustic coolant. In theory they sound great, but no one has come up with a material that can survive the molten saltfor decades