IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong) the other benefit of molten salt cores is that they are self regulating. They stop reacting as the heat rises, and reaction accelerates as temperature decreases. Therefore things like catastrophic meltdowns are not really a huge issue and cooling is much less of a touchy endeavor.
Also, they aren't pressurized like traditional cores are. Therefore if there was a rupture, a bunch of radioactive material doesn't go flying all over the place.
I remember looking into this a number of years ago and I'm excited to see all of the work come to some sort of mainstream fruition.
> IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong) the other benefit of molten salt cores is that they are self regulating
The feature is called a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. Most (all?) water-moderated cores have this feature.
> Therefore things like catastrophic meltdowns are not really a huge issue and cooling is much less of a touchy endeavor.
Meltdowns such as in Fukushima and Three Mile Island are a result of reactor decay heat. In both cases, the fission has already stopped, but the shortest-lived fission products are generating enough heat to cause a problem. Pretty much every Gen-IV concept reactor has provided for passive decay heat removal as well.
So are LWRs. With MSRs one doesn't get a runaway nuclear reaction like it happened at Chernobyl and no hydrogen explosions (it doesn't use water as a coolant) like it happened at Fukushima. Also the fuel doesn't ignite in contact with water, like in sodium cooled reactors. The reactor vessel doesnt need to be pressurized, which is a huge safety advantage. Fortunately there are no also issues with spent fuel pools? One thing to watch out for is that the molten salt tank doesn't rupture or leak. Flourine based molten salts are quite corrosive.
> One thing to watch out for is that the molten salt tank doesn't rupture or leak
Yeah, from reading [0] this seems like to be a big thing to kill even CSP projects.
> Flourine based molten salts are quite corrosive.
Seems like they are going with "Molten Chloride Fast Reactor "[1] which I have no idea what kind of eutectic mixture will make this up (can't find anything besides marketing), maybe its something similar to what I was exploring back in early 2019 with various ionic chlorides with alkali earth metals [2].
I don't think that's a feature of molten salt specifically? I though this was also achieved with pebble bed reactors via doppler-spreading on neutron velocities?
All true, except I think this is a uranium-fuelled reactor, but cooled with NaCl. This is different to molten salt cores, where in fact the fuel itself is a molten salt.
Also, they aren't pressurized like traditional cores are. Therefore if there was a rupture, a bunch of radioactive material doesn't go flying all over the place.
I remember looking into this a number of years ago and I'm excited to see all of the work come to some sort of mainstream fruition.