First Fuel Produced for the Idaho National Lab's Experimental Molten Salt Reactor. [View all]

[NNadir]

First fuel produced for molten salt reactor experiment

Idaho National Laboratory has launched full-scale production of enriched fuel salt for the world's first test of a molten chloride salt fast reactor - technology that could be deployed as soon as the 2030s for both terrestrial and maritime applications.

The Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) project - a public-private collaboration between Southern Company, TerraPower, CORE POWER, and the US Department of Energy (DOE) - is planned to be the first reactor experiment hosted at the Laboratory for Operation and Testing in the United States (LOTUS) test bed being built at the lab by the DOE's National Reactor Innovation Center. It uses liquid salt as the fuel and the coolant, allowing for high operating temperatures to efficiently produce heat or electricity.

The Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment will need 72 to 75 batches of fuel salt to enable it to go critical - giving Idaho National Laboratory (INL) its largest fuel production challenge in 30 years, according to the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy. The fuel salt production process began in 2020, but early attempts yielded far below the goal of 90% conversion of uranium metal into uranium chloride and production of 18 kg of fuel salt per batch. But a breakthrough in 2024 - when the team developed a new step to improve uranium utilisation - eventually led to the achievement of 95% conversion and full-batch production. They have since demonstrated they can produce a batch in as little as one day, according to INL.

The first fuel salt production batch was delivered at the end of September, with four further batches to be produced by March 2026...

The orange pedophile apparently supports this effort, which has no bearing on whether or not it is a good idea. If the orange pedophile supports the statement that water is wet - although it's possible, being senile, he might not - that does not make water dry.

For molten salts, I am personally a fluoride kind of guy because of the nuclear reaction ³⁵Cl[n, gamma]³⁶Cl will take place in chloride salts. Removing ³⁵Cl to prevent this reaction, and using a pure ³⁷Cl salt requires expensive isotopic separations. (I doubt the INL fuel is isotopically separated pure ³⁷Cl) This said, it is unlikely that given its mobility and the solubility of most of its salts, it is doubtful that released ³⁶Cl could ever be present in concentrations that would engender significant health risks, even at a point where secular equilibrium was reached even with it's long half-life, 301,000 years.

(BNL does not give capture cross sections for ³⁶Cl; I'm sure it's somewhere in the literature, but I'm too lazy to look.)

I have, for the record, proposed to my son a control salt, an iodide salt made from fissiogenic iodine, a mixture of ¹²⁷I and ¹²⁹I for a special type of reactor, however this type of salt that I proposed will shut a reactor down, not operate it. (It's a very, very, very esoteric system.)

Bromine has the same problems as chlorine, only worse. A bromide molten salt will not support fission.

I fully understand some rationale for chloride, inasmuch as chlorine is earth abundant and there is a risk of fluorine depletion. It may not affect nuclear salts all that much because of the high energy density of nuclear fuels, which makes them environmentally superior to all other fuels and all other systems for producing energy.

Very few of the concerns raised by antinukes about radioactive materials hold much water against the alternatives, one of which is the destruction of the planetary ecosystem from fossil fuel waste, but that said, in concert with an ignorant media, selective attention, and a poorly educated public with respect to nuclear issues, the war on nuclear energy has been highly successful, something I regard as a reason behind the collapse of the planetary atmosphere. To my mind, as often stated, nuclear energy is the only workable tool we have to ameliorate - as much as is possible at this late date - the aforementioned collapse. I regard it as impossible to accumulate enough ³⁶Cl to represent a real risk under any circumstances. This also said, one only has to look at the carrying on about Fukushima tritium to recognize how these silly objections result in paroxysms of stupidity. The number of people harmed, the number of fish, harmed by Fukushima tritium is effectively zero.

This INL molten chloride reactor will, in any case, be the third molten salt reactor to operate to my knowledge, the first being the original MSRE at Oak Ridge which operated with a FLIBE salt, a version of the same reactor built and now operating in China without much difference apparently from the Oak Ridge original.

These reactors, if the materials science holds up, offer the prospect of doing a hell of a lot more than simply and merely generating electricity, to which the article alludes.

Have a nice day.