Molten Salt Reactor - Advantages

Advantages

The molten salt reactor offers many potential advantages:

  • Inherently safe design (safety by passive components and the strong negative temperature coefficient of reactivity).
  • Using an abundant supply of thorium to breed uranium-233 fuel.
  • Much cleaner: as a full recycle system, the discharge wastes from the reactor are predominately fission products, most of which have relatively short half lives compared to longer-lived actinide wastes. This can result in a significant reduction in the containment period in a geologic repository (300 years vs. tens of thousands of years).
  • The fuel's liquid phase not only allows for fission products to be separated easily from the fuel, but also from each other, which allows for some of the potentially useful fission products to be collected and sold.
  • There is no need for precise fuel rod manufacturing
  • Since the reactor operates at atmospheric pressure, there is no need for a pressure vessel
  • Can "burn" some problematic radioactive waste (with transuranic elements from traditional solid-fuel nuclear reactors).
  • Possible even in small, even 2–8 MWth or 1–3 MWe. Submarine or aircraft size is possible.
  • Can react to load changes in less than 60 seconds (unlike "traditional" solid-fuel nuclear power plants).

Read more about this topic:  Molten Salt Reactor

Famous quotes containing the word advantages:

    “If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel.... Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The respect for human rights is one of the most significant advantages of a free and democratic nation in the peaceful struggle for influence, and we should use this good weapon as effectively as possible.”
    —Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)