Copenhagen Atomics Molten Salt Reactors

Quote from Diadon Acs

What are your thoughts on this upcoming Thorium Molten Salt SMR from Copenhagen Atomics??

YouTube Link.

You had me at Thorium.

Jokes apart, knowing that the molten salt thorium reactors were tested extensively at the MW scale and even powered the only atomic powered aircraft ever built, all of this back in the 1960s, and we still don’t see them built massively while there’s not technical or economic reason for this, makes you wonder a lot of things.

Before the glitch that forced to get back to an earlier version of the database, I had seen Frogfall answering my “while there’s not technical or economic reason for this,” with the reports where the issues of the inadequacies of Hastelloy for long term operation due to the Helium embrittlement and transmutations.

I am well aware of these issues that were in the very reports of the pilot plant at Oak Ridge, what I refer to is that the challenge to find better metallurgy was simply never addressed, it could have been well solved by now if it had.

Curbina - the corrosion was only one of the problems. Whether that particular problem can be solved (or not) is only one of the many technical risks faced by all of the new programs.

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4372873

https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1868062

Also, the problem of separation and settling of fissile material from the liquid "salt", creating a potential criticality hazard, shouldn't be underestimated.

Of course you could instead subscribe to the Bruce Hoglund version of events; "All the problems were solved, shutting down the program was simply political"  https://moltensalt.org/