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Transatomic Power's Safer Reactor Eats Nuclear Waste

4 points by markmassie 12y ago

mschuster91 12y ago
MSRs have two systemic problems: 1) separation of molten salt and "burned" fuel 2) molten salt being higly corrosive to the plumbing I fail to see how this "new" design fixes these two inherent problems.
- markmassie 12y ago
  Co-founder of Transatomic here. I'm not sure what you mean with your first point, but your concern with corrosion was solved in the 1970s at Oak Ridge National Lab, where they operated a molten salt reactor for four years. That reactor demonstrated that extremely low corrosion with a high-nickel alloy called Hastelloy-N, which is similar to the metals widely used to handle other high-temperature molten salts in industries like aluminum refining. You can find more information on corrosion and material compatibility in section 2.5 of our technical white paper: http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf
  - lawtguy 12y ago
    The white paper was pretty interesting. I'd certainly like to see Transatomic build a demonstration reactor. If you can really meet the promises of a half the cost and better safety, this could be key in getting carbon emissions under control. A few questions (which hopefully are not stupid ones): 1) How does the auxiliary containment make the fuel safe? Does it just need to be large enough to let the fuel spread out and eventually cool down? 2) Is there any concern about maintenance of the auxiliary containment unit? Seems like the sort of thing that might have corners cut around it. 3) If the worst happens and plug unfreezes or the reactor breaks and fills up the auxiliary containment, what happens to the reactor and the surrounding area? Can this sort of thing be cleaned up and the reactor restarted or is this a bury it in concrete and leave it alone for 200 years sort of thing?
  - mschuster91 12y ago
    What I mean with "separation" is: essentially, you dump old waste into the molten salt so that the radioactivity generates heat which is used for generating power. So in order to keep the same volume, you have to take out the equivalent amount of "spent" fuel (stable and thus useless atoms) out of the molten salt - this separation process IIRC was the main blocker for MSR.

4 points by markmassie 12y ago

MSRs have two systemic problems: 1) separation of molten salt and "burned" fuel 2) molten salt being higly corrosive to the plumbing I fail to see how this "new" design fixes these two inherent problems.

markmassie 12y ago
Co-founder of Transatomic here. I'm not sure what you mean with your first point, but your concern with corrosion was solved in the 1970s at Oak Ridge National Lab, where they operated a molten salt reactor for four years. That reactor demonstrated that extremely low corrosion with a high-nickel alloy called Hastelloy-N, which is similar to the metals widely used to handle other high-temperature molten salts in industries like aluminum refining. You can find more information on corrosion and material compatibility in section 2.5 of our technical white paper: http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf
- lawtguy 12y ago
  The white paper was pretty interesting. I'd certainly like to see Transatomic build a demonstration reactor. If you can really meet the promises of a half the cost and better safety, this could be key in getting carbon emissions under control. A few questions (which hopefully are not stupid ones): 1) How does the auxiliary containment make the fuel safe? Does it just need to be large enough to let the fuel spread out and eventually cool down? 2) Is there any concern about maintenance of the auxiliary containment unit? Seems like the sort of thing that might have corners cut around it. 3) If the worst happens and plug unfreezes or the reactor breaks and fills up the auxiliary containment, what happens to the reactor and the surrounding area? Can this sort of thing be cleaned up and the reactor restarted or is this a bury it in concrete and leave it alone for 200 years sort of thing?
- mschuster91 12y ago
  What I mean with "separation" is: essentially, you dump old waste into the molten salt so that the radioactivity generates heat which is used for generating power. So in order to keep the same volume, you have to take out the equivalent amount of "spent" fuel (stable and thus useless atoms) out of the molten salt - this separation process IIRC was the main blocker for MSR.