Molten Salt Reactors
1 Molten Salt Reactors Thomas J. Dolan, Member, IEEE Fig. 1. MSRE core. Liquid fuel flowed upwards through Abstract— Nuclear power is advancing slowly because of public channels in the graphite. [ORNL] concerns about nuclear accidents, radioactive waste, fuel supply, cost, and nuclear proliferation. The development of molten salt reactors could alleviate most of these concerns and prevent water-cooled The MSRE demonstrated that the issues of control, reactor accidents like those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and pumping, heat removal, radioactivity containment, and Fukushima. The purpose of this article is to provide information about corrosion could be managed. Oak Ridge also designed a the potential advantages and problems of molten salt reactors. The coolants could be either fluorides or chlorides, operated above their Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (MSBR) that would produce melting temperatures, to avoid solidification, and well below their more fuel than it burned, using Flibe salt with dissolved ThF4 233 boiling temperatures, to prevent evaporation losses. “Fast” reactors use and UF4. It would have had a breeding ratio (BR) of 1.06 energetic fission neutrons, while “thermal” reactors use graphite to and a fuel doubling time of 22 years but funding was slow the neutrons down to thermal energies. We describe four reactor i types: solid fuel thermal, liquid fuel thermal, liquid fuel fast, and terminated in the 1970s. “stable salt” fast reactors (liquid fuel in tubes). We discuss load following, reactor design projects, and development problems. Liquid II. LIQUID AND SOLID FUEL MSRS fuel reactors will require a chemical processing plant to adjust fissile fuel inventory, fission products, actinides, and corrosivity in a hot, Neutrons emitted by fission start at high energies, called highly-radioactive environment.
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