Serious technical problems for the much hyped molten salt nuclear reactor
 Advanced reactor developers trying to expand nuclear power’s selling points
Molten salt reactor developers believe they can solve nuclear’s cost problem. Utiity Dive, Matthew Bandyk, 12 March 2020, “……….. the passage of the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA) has given the nuclear industry a new boost in confidence that advanced reactors will make significant progress soon. Signed into law by President Trump in early 2019, NEIMA requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to create a new regulatory structure by the end of 2027 that will ease the licensing process for new reactor designs. ……..More federal legislative support for advanced reactors is possible ……… Despite the enthusiasm for the technology, commercialization could be many years away. Molten salt reactors still have several technical challenges that must be solved before they can become accepted in the power industry, according to Jacopo Buongiorno, TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology /
…….. The MIT Energy Initiative study found that…. “less mature reactor concepts, including lead fast reactors, gas-cooled fast reactors, and molten salt systems, however, would not be expected to reach commercialization before 2050 .
……. One of the biggest challenges that extends the timeline is determining the structural materials that would go into a molten salt reactor core, which may be very different than the materials used in conventional reactors because of the completely different chemical environment.
While the Oak Ridge National Laboratory operated an experimental molten salt reactor for several years in the 1960’s, that project was for research and not for producing power, so it only partially answers the many technical questions needed to determine how a molten salt reactor could operate as a power plant, according to Buongiorno. “We don’t know exactly yet how long the materials used for molten salt reactors will last before they corrode,” he said. “Another important issue to be resolved is access and maintenance of the reactor components during power operations and outages, since the molten salts can become highly radioactive.” ….https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuclear-energy-storage-advanced-reactor-developers-trying-to-expand-nuclea/573570/
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