Viewing profile — achalhp

You're correct. The vessel & primary heat exchanger of a MSR which are in contact with liquid-fuel is equivalent to fuel assemblies of many solid-fuel reactors. In solid-fuel react…

I agree. But, in a molten-salt reactor, the vessel and heat exchangers are equivalent to fuel assemblies. Dispose the vessel and heat exchangers similar to Zr-clad million dollar f…

Good points. Primary loop of a MSR is equivalent to a cladding of a solid fuel assembly. You get a REACTOR at the same cost/MWe of solid fuel assembly. Ni alloys are cheaper than Z…

Planets rotate so backup power is needed during nights. Spacecraft has to avoid obstracles and has to move, so backup is needed. During interstallar journey there is time delay in …

You included my sentence: "Efficiency really matters when we have >1000 GW of installed nuclear capacity." I wanted to address that: efficiency matters. Inefficient technologies wi…

(Molten salt reactor is a fluid fuel reactor. Fluid: liquid, gas and plasma.) Molten salt reactor is a stepping stone for fusion reactors. We need to master liquid and gaseous reac…

Highest temperature fission reactors are the gas core (vapor core) and ion core reactors. They are fluid-fuel reactors, but not demonstrated. Currently solid-fuel reactors hold the…

>Tritium production: If lithium is used in the salt, tritium will be produced, Not a disadvantage for all MSRs. Both lithium and beryllium can be avoided. FLiBe is required for eff…

>Complex chemical plant This is not a disadvantage for all MSRs. Only breeders need chemical plant. Not fair to compare a solid-fuel burner to liquid-fuel breeder. Let us compare l…

The successor of LWR/HWR should be a fluid-fuel reactor. Once we setup a pebble/advanced fuel making factory, closing it will takes decades (because people may lose jobs) and the n…

Firstly heat from inefficient low temperature solid-fuel reactors can't be used directly for many applications. So consider electricity. Cars/planes/kitchen-stoves cant use uranium…

From the article: >Problems with Molten Salt Reactors... >...but similar problems may show up in long-lived power reactors. Author assumes that MSR components should last as long a…

From the article: >if something goes wrong in a MSR and the temperature starts going up, a freeze plug can melt, A MSR does not need any sort of valve to drain the fuel. ORNL-MSBR …

RE: Ah, the good old days! "Exposure of personnel to radiation has been held well below permissible limits: the maximum exposure of any individual in any quarter has been http://mo…

MSRE had a charcoal-bed off-gas system which safely stored all the noble gases. It was cooled and shielded with water, similar to today's PWRs. PWRs also have water chemistry contr…

RE: Furthermore, they were in the 1960s, before the NRC existed and before we worried about ALARA. "Exposure of personnel to radiation has been held well below permissible limits: …

RE: A line I heard recently regarding MSR maintenance is: "You'll need robots to do the maintenance of your maintenance robots." Another memorable gem is "If you can make robots th…

Both metallic fuel and salt fuel are not suitable for geological repository. Salt fuel may be stored in salt mines, but unproven. More R&D is needed for geological disposal; but, t…

RE "This kind of reactor needs enrichment once (to start up) and then can just be fed natural, DU, or SNF and it will run on a stream of it happily "forever" (until the vessel life…

Yeah, I missed it the first time. You commented when I started editing it. I took (N,TOT) this time. Fission product cross sections is still higher. https://imgur.com/a/pjoNv1p CAN…

Fission products have larger cross section than enriched Boron-10. It is all about concentration; that is the number of B-10 atoms per number of atoms of fuel. Here is the cross se…

What applies for fission products should also apply for control rods in fast spectrum. If control rods do not absorb fast neutrons, how a fast reactor is controlled? The cross sect…