3 ms·
A complete wild-ass guess -- those concerns are most important in small-scale reactors, and the primary driving force behind small reactors is Navy submarine us
by stewartbutler 14y ago
A complete wild-ass guess -- those concerns are most important in small-scale reactors, and the primary driving force behind small reactors is Navy submarine use. At sea you are surrounded by water, so there is no reason not to use it as your fluid. Adding salt would add another complication to the supply chain.
I guess you could theoretically pull salt out of the water, but there is no telling what impurities may be left. Reverse-osmotic water filtering makes water so pure that it supposedly extracts minerals back out of your bones and teeth, so impurities are no concern when it used as an exchange fluid.
- iyulaev 14y agoThe MSRs use molten salts in the sense of ionic compounds, not in the sense of NaCl. They're talking about uranium flouride or liquid flouride thorium.
- stickfigure 14y ago...which is one of the challenges of MSRs. Long-term high-temperature exposure to corrosive flourine salts is a not-completely-solved materials problem.
- geon 14y agoI highly doubt the availability of water ever was of any concern when designing the submarine reactor. It is a closed system.