| Title | MIT Creates Add-on Molten Salt Reactor to Avoid Regulatory Red Tape | |
| Date | Monday April 03 2017, @11:15AM | |
| Author | mrpg | |
| Topic | ||
| from the pronounced-nucular dept. | ||
Scientists at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory have devised an unconventional plan for accelerating the development of a small, safe, cheap nuclear reactor: they want to build a prototype that piggybacks on their existing facility.
Since the planned one-megawatt demonstration reactor would be incapable of sustaining a fission reaction on its own, the researchers believe they could avoid building a standalone experimental prototype, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission generally requires. That site selection and licensing process can take a decade or longer, so the hope is that this approach could cost hundreds of millions of dollars less and take half as much time to build.
[...] The researchers specifically want to test designs for a small, transportable molten-salt-cooled reactor, intended for off-grid purposes such as generating electricity for remote villages or worksites. Molten-salt reactors, first researched in the 1950s, are a subject of growing interest in the field because of the potential they offer for greater safety and lower costs compared with traditional nuclear power plants.
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/03/mit-wants-to-build-add-on-1-mw-sub.html
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printed from SoylentNews, MIT Creates Add-on Molten Salt Reactor to Avoid Regulatory Red Tape on 2023-06-18 05:50:41