Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nosuchthing 4029 days ago
I'm assuming the "Molten Salt Reactor" method is the same principle as the "Sodium Reactor" that was experimented with around 50 years ago?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment

3 comments

The ambiguity of "salt" is unfortunate here. The "salt" in "molten salt" is a salt, but not table salt (so, no sodium). The one proposed here is a lithium fluoride/uranium fluoride salt. Conversely, while table salt has sodium in it, the sodium in the sodium reactor isn't part of table salt, it's pure sodium metal. (Turns out they explode, also, so there's not much enthusiasm about them anymore.)
The Sodium reactor is a standard solid core Uranium fueled design that uses liquid sodium as a coolant.

The molten salt design is completely and utterly different. In a molten salt reactor the fuel itself is molten (in salt form), which turns out to offer a variety of benefits.