5 ms·

So ok, the website is cool and the technology is said to be something like 99.9999% better. This might be a stupid question but I'm no nuclear engineer not a sp

by aout 11y ago

So ok, the website is cool and the technology is said to be something like 99.9999% better. This might be a stupid question but I'm no nuclear engineer not a specialist about chemistry or physics but I wonder why a such "beautiful" idea would not be already used. I've read the related wikipedia article about Molten Salt Reactors and I understand there are several problems about the technology: mostly corrosion and embrittlement. So now I find myself asking this: did they fix those problems? The website copy suggests so. Can somebody explain how? I couldn't figure it out. edit: clearly the team and company have quite legit credentials, MIT nuclear department etc... they must know what they're talking about. I just want to know if they've given details about the solution.

Difwif 11y ago
From my understanding it comes down to part politics, part feasibility. When nuclear power first started becoming popular light water reactors were easier to make and their fuel/byproducts aligned with the production of nuclear weapons. As years went on regulation and inertia did a great job of cementing us into our old ways. Today, advances in (material) science have made producing molten salt reactors more feasible. They also seem more attractive now that the public is generally very adverse to nuclear waste and power plant failures. I'm paraphrasing what was explained to me so someone that knows more please chime in. Kirk Sorensen has been a major advocate of molten-salt reactors and gave a great Google tech talk on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
nosuchthing 11y ago
I'm assuming the "Molten Salt Reactor" method is the same principle as the "Sodium Reactor" that was experimented with around 50 years ago? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment
- etangent 11y ago
  Sodium reactor is an example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal_cooled_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal_cooled_reactor. Molten salt seems to be a different type https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  The Sodium reactor is a standard solid core Uranium fueled design that uses liquid sodium as a coolant. The molten salt design is completely and utterly different. In a molten salt reactor the fuel itself is molten (in salt form), which turns out to offer a variety of benefits.
- apendleton 11y ago
  The ambiguity of "salt" is unfortunate here. The "salt" in "molten salt" is a salt, but not table salt (so, no sodium). The one proposed here is a lithium fluoride/uranium fluoride salt. Conversely, while table salt has sodium in it, the sodium in the sodium reactor isn't part of table salt, it's pure sodium metal. (Turns out they explode, also, so there's not much enthusiasm about them anymore.)
MichaelGG 11y ago
Probably the same reason Germany shutdown its power plants after Fukushima. Despite Fukushima being a huge success story [1] some people are scared, some unthinking, almost all irrational and unable to handle probability at all. Nuclear power seems magical and shares a word with scary weapons. It's not "natural" for mediocre definitions of natural. 1: Seriously. Fukushima did everything wrong. Huge earthquake and tsunami. Older design. Then they tried to cover stuff up. And the repair crews showed up with wrong equipment. More denial. And all that with no loss of life. Just a bit of "lost" land for a while, and extra costs. So many people freak out about it, but that US carmaker with the stupid ignition killed more people and we aren't giving up cars. Fukushima screams "hey, wee couldn't fuck this up, even given perfect conditions and terrible management". But hey, why take a rational approach when you can " go green ".
- fossuser 11y ago
  Doesn't it take a while for people to die or see effects from radiation exposure (unless it's extreme?). Is there a reason to suspect that we won't see problems from what happened? Also having land uninhabitable for thousands of years weighs pretty heavily even if the risk of failure is low.
  - lettergram 11y ago
    It's not thousands of years, though it will likely be a few hundred[1]. [1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/area-around-chernobyl-remains-uninhabitable-25-years-later/article4266317/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/area-around-cherno...
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    They originally said it'd be a few years, but the JP government is on behind, so it might take longer to decontaminate. I don't think anyone is talking more than a decade or few. Countries sell land, so think of it that way, at worst. The clean up is also super expensive. And, over 1000 people died from evacuation-related issues. I guess that's just a factor when you move older people around, for any reason. So, yes Fukushima sucked, but in context, given the incompetence, it seems very encouraging. Unless we act even more stupid and get a large disaster, why would it be worse? From what I've read, the estimates of cancer are really low. But you're right, there might be a few directly related deaths over the next several decades. You'd think this would result in an attitude of wanting to push newer designs and so on, but running away is a more human reaction, it seems. :(
flogic 11y ago
In the "what's next" section it indicates the next step is more lab experiments. So, I'd guess that they have quite a bit of work ahead of them.
madaxe_again 11y ago
Because nuclear weapons aren't a byproduct of this kind of reactor, and that renders it useless in the eyes of politician-warmongers.
- zymhan 11y ago
  That was more true in the 60's, and so we never spent the time to try bringing this to production. We don't need to make all of our nuclear reactors capable of producing weapons-grade material anymore, and I don't think there's much objection to new reactor types on those grounds.
  - beefman 11y ago
    Actually it was never true, but it makes a good story. Sorensen in particular claims the fast reactor program was favored because of its weapons applications. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fast reactors, from their conception, were pursued for sustainability reasons by pacifists like Zinn. The first electricity ever produced from fission was produced by EPR I. Every single gram of fissile in the world's nuclear weapons was made in a thermal reactor or enriched from ore. The MSR program was cancelled along with myriad other programs during the early-70's recession... including the nuclear rocket programs, the Apollo program, etc. There has never been an economic case for the breeder simply because the fuel cycle is such a small part of the cost of nuclear energy. When you have a factor of 5,000,000 you can afford to throw away a factor of 100.
- DennisP 11y ago
  Natural gas plants don't produce weapons material either, and we're building plenty of those. The weapons material we do produce comes from specialized reactors, not civilian power plants.

by aout 11y ago

Difwif 11y ago

From my understanding it comes down to part politics, part feasibility. When nuclear power first started becoming popular light water reactors were easier to make and their fuel/byproducts aligned with the production of nuclear weapons. As years went on regulation and inertia did a great job of cementing us into our old ways. Today, advances in (material) science have made producing molten salt reactors more feasible. They also seem more attractive now that the public is generally very adverse to nuclear waste and power plant failures. I'm paraphrasing what was explained to me so someone that knows more please chime in. Kirk Sorensen has been a major advocate of molten-salt reactors and gave a great Google tech talk on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI

nosuchthing 11y ago

I'm assuming the "Molten Salt Reactor" method is the same principle as the "Sodium Reactor" that was experimented with around 50 years ago? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment

etangent 11y ago
Sodium reactor is an example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal_cooled_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal_cooled_reactor. Molten salt seems to be a different type https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
InclinedPlane 11y ago
The Sodium reactor is a standard solid core Uranium fueled design that uses liquid sodium as a coolant. The molten salt design is completely and utterly different. In a molten salt reactor the fuel itself is molten (in salt form), which turns out to offer a variety of benefits.
apendleton 11y ago
The ambiguity of "salt" is unfortunate here. The "salt" in "molten salt" is a salt, but not table salt (so, no sodium). The one proposed here is a lithium fluoride/uranium fluoride salt. Conversely, while table salt has sodium in it, the sodium in the sodium reactor isn't part of table salt, it's pure sodium metal. (Turns out they explode, also, so there's not much enthusiasm about them anymore.)

MichaelGG 11y ago

Probably the same reason Germany shutdown its power plants after Fukushima. Despite Fukushima being a huge success story [1] some people are scared, some unthinking, almost all irrational and unable to handle probability at all. Nuclear power seems magical and shares a word with scary weapons. It's not "natural" for mediocre definitions of natural. 1: Seriously. Fukushima did everything wrong. Huge earthquake and tsunami. Older design. Then they tried to cover stuff up. And the repair crews showed up with wrong equipment. More denial. And all that with no loss of life. Just a bit of "lost" land for a while, and extra costs. So many people freak out about it, but that US carmaker with the stupid ignition killed more people and we aren't giving up cars. Fukushima screams "hey, wee couldn't fuck this up, even given perfect conditions and terrible management". But hey, why take a rational approach when you can " go green ".

fossuser 11y ago
Doesn't it take a while for people to die or see effects from radiation exposure (unless it's extreme?). Is there a reason to suspect that we won't see problems from what happened? Also having land uninhabitable for thousands of years weighs pretty heavily even if the risk of failure is low.
- lettergram 11y ago
  It's not thousands of years, though it will likely be a few hundred[1]. [1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/area-around-chernobyl-remains-uninhabitable-25-years-later/article4266317/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/area-around-cherno...
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  They originally said it'd be a few years, but the JP government is on behind, so it might take longer to decontaminate. I don't think anyone is talking more than a decade or few. Countries sell land, so think of it that way, at worst. The clean up is also super expensive. And, over 1000 people died from evacuation-related issues. I guess that's just a factor when you move older people around, for any reason. So, yes Fukushima sucked, but in context, given the incompetence, it seems very encouraging. Unless we act even more stupid and get a large disaster, why would it be worse? From what I've read, the estimates of cancer are really low. But you're right, there might be a few directly related deaths over the next several decades. You'd think this would result in an attitude of wanting to push newer designs and so on, but running away is a more human reaction, it seems. :(

flogic 11y ago

In the "what's next" section it indicates the next step is more lab experiments. So, I'd guess that they have quite a bit of work ahead of them.

madaxe_again 11y ago

Because nuclear weapons aren't a byproduct of this kind of reactor, and that renders it useless in the eyes of politician-warmongers.

zymhan 11y ago
That was more true in the 60's, and so we never spent the time to try bringing this to production. We don't need to make all of our nuclear reactors capable of producing weapons-grade material anymore, and I don't think there's much objection to new reactor types on those grounds.
- beefman 11y ago
  Actually it was never true, but it makes a good story. Sorensen in particular claims the fast reactor program was favored because of its weapons applications. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fast reactors, from their conception, were pursued for sustainability reasons by pacifists like Zinn. The first electricity ever produced from fission was produced by EPR I. Every single gram of fissile in the world's nuclear weapons was made in a thermal reactor or enriched from ore. The MSR program was cancelled along with myriad other programs during the early-70's recession... including the nuclear rocket programs, the Apollo program, etc. There has never been an economic case for the breeder simply because the fuel cycle is such a small part of the cost of nuclear energy. When you have a factor of 5,000,000 you can afford to throw away a factor of 100.
DennisP 11y ago
Natural gas plants don't produce weapons material either, and we're building plenty of those. The weapons material we do produce comes from specialized reactors, not civilian power plants.