Name: Molten Salt Reactors - What Are They, How Do They Work?
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Molten Salt Reactors - What Are They, How Do They Work?

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A researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hopes to make molten salt reactors by fine-tuning how they behave under extreme heat and pressure. Could his work help to stabilize this volatile area of nuclear energy?There are active molten salt plants like in Nevada, which has experienced setbacks that reduce its overall efficiency from a . A recent report from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) found that molten salt tanks had that required costly full drainage and refilling for repairs. The technology is very new at the commercial scale, NREL emphasizes, and needs to be developed for safety and best practices.Read ThisMost of the problems the NREL described are structural, because salt solutions just aren’t well understood in high-temperature nuclear contexts the same way water is after decades of regular use in power plants. MIT experimental physicist Boris Khaykovich says molten salt offers a safer, more reliable alternative to pressurized water reactors because it reaches much higher temperatures without boiling.In new molten salt plant designs, which don’t need to rely on water-based precedents and can introduce next-generation nuclear technology, the nuclear fuel could be dissolved into the medium of molten salt. That means new chemical reactions that must be understood. “[E]xtending the concept to dissolving the fissile and fertile fuel in the salt certainly represents a leap in lateral thinking relative to nearly every reactor operated so far,” the World Nuclear Association .This is where Khaykovich’s research comes in. “Khaykovich used the NOMAD instrument at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). NOMAD features high-temperature sample environments that allow samples to be heated to over 1500°F before they are studied with neutron diffractometry,” Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) said in a statement. NOMAD stands for Nanoscale-Ordered Materials Diffractometer, and Khaykovich used it to analyze the chromium isotopes found in a sample of at sponsoring ORNL.Related StoryKhaykovich studied chromium traces in his samples of sodium chloride, which are important because of the way they get into the molten salt to begin with: usually as corrosion from a reaction between the molten salt and the metal alloy container that holds it. “Using NOMAD, Khaykovich was able to see how each positively charged chromium ion attracted six negative chlorine ions. As a result, chlorine ions are on average closer together than they are in pure molten sodium chloride,” the statement explains.The nitty gritty results of experiments like this are critical to building a wider understanding of molten salt, especially when corrosion and other unanticipated engineering issues have been cited as one of the major obstacles to the technology by the NREL. Examining chromium by analyzing how it attracts and repulses neutrons can help engineers “how chromium interacts with other constituencies in the melt,” ORNL explains.“The models we want to generate with this data would be a great asset for engineers trying to design molten salt reactors,” Khaykovich concludes.Before You Go...Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below

A researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hopes to make molten salt reactors by fine-tuning how they behave under extreme heat and pressure. Could his work help to stabilize this volatile area of nuclear energy?There are active molten salt plants like in Nevada, which has experienced setbacks that reduce its overall efficiency from a . A recent report from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) found that molten salt tanks had that required costly full drainage and refilling for repairs. The technology is very new at the commercial scale, NREL emphasizes, and needs to be...

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