Molten salt nuclear reactor that eats radioactive waste gets funded

We should serious fast track this technology. Build these out in the mountains an deserts for extra safety and close the old plants down. This would actually be worth creating massive Debt to do. This could if done right actually change everything...energy wise. Instead of more wars lets build thousands of these which will create jobs. We can sell excess energy to other nations to pay the debt off.

Why can't we do anything right? This deserves serious attention and priority. How can we get the attention of our president and congress for this?


ExtreemTech< br />

Transatomic has designed a system that can use different types of fuel, including materials that are discarded as waste from traditional nuclear plants. We might as well eke a little more power out of it instead of sealing it up in metal caskets for 100,000 years, right?

Nuclear power was the resurgent darling of the energy industry just a few years ago as concerns over global warming mounted. Then there was the disastrous meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi plant in central Japan, which will continue to affect residents for years to come. In the wake of this event, nuclear plants in Japan and Germany were completely shut off and plans to expand nuclear power around the world were shelved.

Molten salt reactor designs are appealing because they are essentially immune to meltdowns like the one we saw at Fukushima.

Don't be so sensible. Our government will get involved and make this way too expensive to do so we are continually reliant on oil, gas, and coal. The gained jobs from these reactors this will not even closely replace the potential lost jobs in the other energies. So it would negatively effect our economies in five or so years.

Repost

a reply to: Xeven

Take a look at some of the negatives they list here, I think we need something that will never harm the planet or anything on it. The sun is always there we could use it in ways totally unlike what they are trying now.

Mobile fission products
The primary concern with MSRs is that the radioactive fission products can get everywhere. They are not in fuel pins surrounded by cladding, but are just in a big, sealed vat. You can put a double-layer containment around it, sure, but it is still challenging to keep them all accounted for. Where some of these fission products and actinides are radioactive, others have chemical effects that can eat away at the containment. The implications of this are many.

www.whatisnuclear.com...

a reply to: Xeven

Energy cant be created, only transfered. With that in mind what is the downside of this reactor? do we need another type of tech to deal with the waste of this reactor?

originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: Xeven

Take a look at some of the negatives they list here, I think we need something that will never harm the planet or anything on it. The sun is always there we could use it in ways totally unlike what they are trying now.

Mobile fission products
The primary concern with MSRs is that the radioactive fission products can get everywhere. They are not in fuel pins surrounded by cladding, but are just in a big, sealed vat. You can put a double-layer containment around it, sure, but it is still challenging to keep them all accounted for. Where some of these fission products and actinides are radioactive, others have chemical effects that can eat away at the containment. The implications of this are many.

www.whatisnuclear.com...

I agree but we are long way off from that. I think putting these way out in deserts would solve much of the problem with Chemicals etc...

I have to agree with Char-lee on this. There needs to be more assessment of things. We have to be able to deal with the waste properly. It seems that we shove the problem off on our grandchildren too much.

a reply to: GetHyped

Ah, damnit. I wanted to say inb4 some donklefish yells repost.

a reply to: Xeven

The public is so afraid of nuclear power that it is amazing.

Westinghouse has had modular reactors for awhile now, but they can't sell them to the public. It is kind of like DowClean, best product ever imagined, totally unpopular enough that it will never be sold to anyone anywhere. You could dip a seized up engine in that stuff and pull out what look like brand new parts.

We could be driving around with electric cars powered by the heat generated from radioactive isotopes, but we continue to live in the dark ages. Or at the very least driving around with hydrogen fuel cells produced from the abundant energy produced by nuclear power plants.

The big problem is the purification of Uranium into its most radioactive form leaving behind waste that is so dangerous that it is hard to deal with. If we weren't always trying to get the biggest bang for our buck and were content with more passive systems, the heat differential caused by radioactive elements could be used to harvest vast amounts of energy while creating very little radioactive waste, much less than is even produced by the processing of coal.

Oh well, someday Lockheed Martin's servers are going to be heralded as a new library of Alexandria with millions of projects that could have been but never were simply because of backward superstitious humanoids.

a reply to: Xeven

You know they said the same thing to the predecessor of our current plants? AS well as when our "modern plants" came out.

With out a single test reactor, running for a length of time, and then forcing it to meltdown so we see what we have to deal with in the event of a catastrophe. I don't think we should invest a single ounce of money or time into more nuclear tech. We have taken the wrong path, it ends the same way no matter what.

a reply to: Nechash

As a donklefish, I find that term offensive to my people. We prefer the term "stickler for the rules". Anyway, as a thread has already been posted in this forum on this topic it's inevitable that this thread will be locked so perhaps your energies would be best utilized contributing to the existing thread. It makes no difference to me either personally way but rules be dem rules and all that.

a reply to: Char-Lee

MSR is great when Thorium is the fuel. This is where we should be headed.

www.whatisnuclear.com...

We have had the technology to build nuclear plants that run on the spent fuel rods of other nuclear plants for a long time now. You can thank Jane Fonda and the like for stopping them from going into production. You see, these plants can also be used to create weapons grade materials. So, because there may be some who would pervert the technology for the war machine, civil minded people who want a limitless power supply have to keep looking elsewhere.

a reply to: Vroomfondel

SO wait.... You're saying a reactor meant to run on depleted nuclear plant fuel, which when fresh is a lesser isotope that weapons grade uranium... Will magically go into a reactor meant to run off less than fuel grade uranium, and not only gain more energy than it had in the first reactor, but gain more and become weapons grade uranium...

All while providing us with energy as well... This sounds like some with craft right here my friend.... witch craft....

a reply to: Hijinx

Its not magic... Its called a thermal breeder reactor.

"The nuclear cross section of uranium-235 for slow thermal neutrons is about 1000 barns, while for fast neutrons it is in the order of 1 barn.[1] Therefore thermal neutrons are more likely to cause uranium-235 to fission than to be captured by uranium-238. If at least one neutron from the U-235 fission strikes another nucleus and causes it to fission, then the chain reaction will continue."

Radioactive elements are inherently unstable. When impacted by roaming neutrons they an be mutated into a new isotope capable of sustaining fission.

Roughly 98% of a fuel rod is non-fissionable mass. That prevents spontaneous fission from occurring. When the fuel rods are pulled from containment and exposed to each other fission begins and will continue until there is insufficient fissionable mass to maintain the process. The Breeder reactor uses a neutron moderator such a D2O, deuterium oxide, or graphite to turn the fast neutrons released during fission into thermal neutrons which can then impact isotope 235 material mutating it into fissionable 238 or ultimately weapons grade 239.