When I right click - search google for this image, I get liquid fluoride thorium reactor
No, the fuel was Hybrid, mixture of uranium and Thorium. Didn't reach the optimal conversion of a true breeder. It had to shut down after a few years well short of the expected 30 years life. The fuel ate through the special alloy they had designed to contain it even though the drawing board plan indicated there would be no problem. They haven't finished cleaning the site so it remains a virtual nuclear accident.
The problem is even the economics at optimum level are still far more expensive than "conventional" light and heavy water reactors. There's now a number of new experimental reactors but so far these have been prone to accidents and problems. We won't know the full story on the research until the 2030's.
The next trick of our glorious banks will be to charge us a fee for using net bank!!! You are no longer customer, you are property!!!
The fluid fuel in these reactors, consisting of UF4 and ThF4 dissolved in fluorides of beryllium and lithium, is circulated through a reactor core moderated by graphite.
"The fuel salt contains no thorium because at the time the reactor was being designed we were thinking in terms of the two-fluid breeder and we made the MSIRE salt similar to the anticipated breeder fuel salt."
But there is nothing in the paper to suggest that they ever got as far as using Thorium as the fuel in the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE). It seems U233 was used. The U233 was bred from Thorium elsewhere. The purpose of the experiment in the first instance was to test the feasibility of molten salt as a fuel.
Quote:
The design of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment was begun in 1960. A single-fluid reactor was selected that in its engineering features resembled a converter, but the fuel salt did not contain thorium and thus was similar to the fuel salt for a two-fluid breeder. The MSRE fuel salt is a mixture of uranium, lithium-7, beryllium, and zirconium fluorides. Unclad graphite serves as the moderator (the salt does not wet graphite and will not penetrate into its pores if the pore sizes are small). All other parts of the system that contact salt are made from the nickel-base alloy, INOR-8 (also called Hastelloy-N), which was specially developed in the aircraft program for use with molten fluorides. The maximum power is ~8 MWt, and the heat is rejected to the atmosphere. Construction of the MSRE began in 1962, and the reactor was first critical in 1965. Sustained operation at full power began in December 1966. Successful completion of a six-month run in March of 1968 brought to a close the first phase of operation during which the initial objectives were achieved. The molten fluoride fuel was used for many months at temperatures > 1200ºF (920 K) without corrosive attack on the metal and graphite parts of the system. The reactor equipment operated reliably and the radioactive liquids and gases were contained safely. The fuel was completely stable. Xenon was removed rapidly from the salt. When necessary, radioactive equipment was repaired or replaced in reasonable time and without over exposing maintenance personnel. The second phase of MSRE operation began in August 1968 when a sma ll processing facility attached to the reactor was used to remove the original uranium by treating the fuel salt with fluorine gas. A charge of 233 U fuel was added to the same carrier salt, and on October 2 the MSRE was made critical on 233 U. Six days later the power was taken to 100 kW by Glenn T. Seaborg, Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, bringing to power the first reactor to operate on 233 U. During the years when the MSRE was being built and brought into operation, most of the de- velopment work on molten-salt reactors was in support of the MSRE. However, basic chemistry studies of molten fluoride salts continued through- out this period. One discovery 10 during this time was that the lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride in a fuel salt can be separated from rare earths by vacuum distillation at temperatures near 1000 ° C. This was a significant discovery, since it provided an inexpensive, on-site method for recovering these valuable materials. As a consequence, the study effort looking at future reactors focused on a two- fluid breeder in which the fuel salt would be fluorinated to recover the uranium and distilled to separate the carrier salt from fission products. The blanket salt would be pr ocessed by fluorination alone, since few fission products would be generated in the blanket if the uranium concentration were kept low. Graphite tubes would be used in the core to keep the fuel and fertile streams from mixing.
The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. --Gloria Steinem AREPS™
But there is nothing in the paper to suggest that they ever got as far as using Thorium as the fuel in the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE). It seems U233 was used. The U233 was bred from Thorium elsewhere. The purpose of the experiment in the first instance was to test the feasibility of molten salt as a fuel.
It's breeder design, U233 is usually bred from Thorium which means it would have been constituted mostly of Thorium.
The next trick of our glorious banks will be to charge us a fee for using net bank!!! You are no longer customer, you are property!!!
It's breeder design, U233 is usually bred from Thorium which means it would have been constituted mostly of Thorium.
Quote:
The design of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment was begun in 1960. A single-fluid reactor was selected that in its engineering features resembled a converter, but the fuel salt did not contain thorium and thus was similar to the fuel salt for a two-fluid breeder.
The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. --Gloria Steinem AREPS™
No, the fuel was Hybrid, mixture of uranium and Thorium.
thorium is fertile not fissile, it will always need a source to initiate.
Count du Monet
6 Dec 2013, 03:52 PM
That's a trial which failed to achieve the optimal success they wanted. There's a number of thorium reactors being constructed around the world. Again it is trial. If over time they produce optimal results then in the 2030's we might see breeder reactors for both metals built on the commercial scale.
Too dumb to tell the difference.
As for something small enough to fit in a car, that remains science fiction.
oh so we have gone from it only being a concept on paper to being a trial that didn't produce OPTIMAL results?
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