One study suggested that the reactors could produce more nuclear waste than current systems and that they “will use highly corrosive and pyrophoric fuels and coolants that, following irradiation, will become highly radioactive.”
One study suggested that the reactors could produce more nuclear waste than current systems and that they “will use highly corrosive and pyrophoric fuels and coolants that, following irradiation, will become highly radioactive.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
To prevent the water from evaporating and keep it a liquid at such high temperatures requires a lot of pressure, which in turn costs additional technology, space, and money.
“You can utilize it at these high temperatures, and it doesn’t boil,” Nicholas V. Smith, project director of the molten chloride reactor experiment at the Idaho National Laboratory, told Business Insider.
The first molten salt reactor tested in the 1950s, for example, was small enough to fit on a plane whereas the portion of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California that generates energy takes up 12 acres of land, according to Berkeley Engineering.
Kairos Power is the company that plans to build a test plant it calls Hermes, which will be cooled by molten fluoride salt in Oak Ridge, Tennessee by 2027.
Because molten salt reactors don’t need those thick pressure vessels to keep water a liquid at high temperatures, there’s more design flexibility, Smith said.
“I see molten salt reactors as being prolifically deployed in all areas,” from remote locations to shipping vessels to large power plants, he added.
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