
Transatomic Power's Safer Reactor Eats Nuclear Waste - markmassie
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-05/transatomic-powers-safer-reactor-eats-nuclear-waste
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mschuster91
MSRs have two systemic problems:

1) separation of molten salt and "burned" fuel

2) molten salt being higly corrosive to the plumbing

I fail to see how this "new" design fixes these two inherent problems.

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markmassie
Co-founder of Transatomic here.

I'm not sure what you mean with your first point, but your concern with
corrosion was solved in the 1970s at Oak Ridge National Lab, where they
operated a molten salt reactor for four years. That reactor demonstrated that
extremely low corrosion with a high-nickel alloy called Hastelloy-N, which is
similar to the metals widely used to handle other high-temperature molten
salts in industries like aluminum refining.

You can find more information on corrosion and material compatibility in
section 2.5 of our technical white paper:

[http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf](http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf)

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lawtguy
The white paper was pretty interesting. I'd certainly like to see Transatomic
build a demonstration reactor. If you can really meet the promises of a half
the cost and better safety, this could be key in getting carbon emissions
under control.

A few questions (which hopefully are not stupid ones):

1) How does the auxiliary containment make the fuel safe? Does it just need to
be large enough to let the fuel spread out and eventually cool down?

2) Is there any concern about maintenance of the auxiliary containment unit?
Seems like the sort of thing that might have corners cut around it.

3) If the worst happens and plug unfreezes or the reactor breaks and fills up
the auxiliary containment, what happens to the reactor and the surrounding
area? Can this sort of thing be cleaned up and the reactor restarted or is
this a bury it in concrete and leave it alone for 200 years sort of thing?

