Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by someguydave 2515 days ago
Molten salt designs have somewhat unsolved waste and proliferation issues, but you are correct in general.
1 comments

Isn't there also a corrosion issue, that hot salt tends to corrode normal stainless steel? The usual Achilles heel of these things is welding issues.

It seems research is ongoing: http://www.electrochemsci.org/papers/vol13/130504891.pdf

You think hot salt is bad? Now let's add 1/3 of the periodic table to the salt.. But yeah, people are working on it. The Americans had something in the 60ies (hastalloy), the Chinese are working on it today. In the short term, many o the MSR startups are planning to replace the reactor vessel every few years to get around corrosion issues, as well as the graphite moderator going bad.