To: Dennis Roth who wrote (157198 ) 9/18/2011 12:34:33 PM From: Peter van Steennis 1 Recommendation Read Replies (3) | Respond to Dennis, or anyone knowledgeable, I came across an article on another SI thread that talked of a molten salt reactor that appears to be much safer and what is currently being used. Now, I am not a physicist, scientist nor engineer so I may be missing something but I cannot understand why this molten salt reactor is not the standard for producing atomic energy. en.wikipedia.org molten salt reactor (MSR) is a type of nuclear fission reactor in which the primary coolant is a molten salt mixture. MSRs run at higher temperatures than water cooled reactors for higher thermodynamic efficiency , while staying at low vapor pressure .liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), recently described by Kirk Sorensen at Mount Royal University . [1] nuclear fuel is dissolved in the molten fluoride salt coolant as uranium tetrafluoride (UF4). The fluid becomes critical in a graphite core which serves as the moderator . Fluid fuel reactors have significantly different safety issues compared to solid fuel designs; the potential for major reactor accidents is reduced, while the potential for processing accidents is increased. [2] Aircraft Reactor Experiment (1954) was primarily motivated by the small size that the design could provide, while the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (1965–1969) was a prototype for a thorium fuel cycle breeder reactor nuclear power plant . One of the Generation IV reactor designs is a molten salt-cooled, solid-fuel reactor; the initial reference design is 1000 MWe with a deployment target date of 2025.neutron economy makes more neutrons available to breed thorium-232 into uranium-233. Thus, the compact core makes the molten salt design particularly suitable for the thorium fuel cycle .
