Reply #153: The MSRE was shutdown in 1969 (but research has continued)

[AnEngineer]

The only experiment on a molten salt breeder reactor was the
MSRE - Molten Salt Reactor experiment which ran at Oak Ridge
from 1965 to 1969.

Nobody has been working on a molten salt breeder in decades.

Are you really that far behind in your understanding of science?

Did you actually think people were still working on a molten salt
breeder?

PamW

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Actually Pam this area of research is still quite active. Unfortunately current funding for research is not happing in the United States. This technology was pioneered at ORNL using our tax dollars, but current development on commercialization is being carried out in France and China. If you examine the current research you will find many reference to the ORNL MSRE project. France and China are developing commercial products that are based on reports of fundamental research that was carried out by scientists employed at our government research laboratories.

As a former employee at a federal laboratory I have first-hand experience with this type of waste and abuse in the government. The waste and abuse is caused by constantly shifting political agendas from the people in charge of funding research (i.e. Congress). Anytime ideology trumps rational thought in the decision process the taxpayer suffers. It is very frustrating to see yet another example of political decisions obliterating years of research by dedicated scientists. This blame can be shared by both the right and the left. The right wants to cancel all government spending (unless it is for national defense) and the left want to cancel anything that contains the word nuclear in the spending. Both sides are misguided in their reasoning for not funding this important project.

I will venture to guess that Benjamin Franklin would have been a strong advocate for a federal program to develop this particular form of nuclear power. He would have looked at the science behind the technology and seen a sensible technology that would have rendered his stove design obsolete. He would have seen a design in which safety was a first priority. For him it would be a step forward for science to see such an invention put to practical use.

The "Energy from Thorium" website is an excellent starting place to learn more about this technology (Energy from Thorium). All of the ORNL documents on the MSRE program have been scanned into PDF files and made available on the website. This includes the design documents for building a 1GW power plant based on MSR technology.

This is a very promising technology that eliminates the dangers of nuclear power that are specific to the uranium based light water reactor (LWR) technology. The LWR was originally designed during WWII as a tool for producing isotopes that can be used in building nuclear bombs. Unfortunately because of the economic consequences of the intensive funding for LWR technology for defense, the deployment for commercial use was cheaper that the deployment of the less well developed MSR technology. As a result LWR technology is used in almost all of the reactors operating in the world. The technology was developed using money from the national security side of the budget, so economic justifications and public safety were not a significant factor in the decision process. The contractors who built the LWRs then capitalized on the technology by selling reactors in the commercial sector. The long term profits came from the sale of very expensive fuel rods. It is interesting to note that the liquid reactor design removes this profit center. Thorium is very cheap and the refueling process is about as complicated as adding a pinch of salt to a soup that has been simmering on your stove for the last couple weeks. Perhaps the entrenched nuclear industry saw LFTR as a threat to their profitable business model of selling proprietary fuel rods to the commercial sector. In this sense the economics of a LWR is like the economics of an ink-jet printer.

One of the advantages of a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is that instead of creating bomb making material it can be used to dispose of the nuclear waste that was produced by the legacy LWR technology. The fission process in the LFTR splits the hazardous isotopes of uranium and plutonium into smaller and safer elements.

Nuclear power has been given a bad rap because of political decisions about technology that was funded during the Cold War. It is time to move on. Current engineering studies suggest that it is possible to design a nuclear reactors that can operate continuously and safely for 100 years. It is time to start a Liberty Ship program to deploy thousands of these LFTR reactors. With this fleet of reactors we can establish energy independence that is based on a safe and ultra-green technology.