Scientists want to test plans for a transportable molten-salt reactor by piggybacking on their existing nuclear facility
Scientists want to test plans for a transportable molten-salt reactor by piggybacking on their existing nuclear facility.
The secured set of doors leading into the containment building at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory.
JOSHUA MATHEWS
by James Temple March 27, 2017
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 university lab operates a six-megawatt light-water-cooled research reactor on the northwest side of campus, housed within a powder-blue steel and concrete containment building. The proposed “subcritical facility” would be built adjacent to the hexagonal core, taking over a pair of medical irradiation rooms once used for experimental cancer treatments.
Lin-wen Hu, the principal research scientist at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, developed the proposal for
the “subcritical facility."
It would be about half the size of a typical demonstration reactor and would depend on neutrons generated by the main reactor to instigate the fission chain reaction in its fuel. That means the project would probably require only an amendment to the existing permit on MIT’s reactor, which went online in 1974, says Lin-wen Hu, the principal research scientist at the lab and the proposal’s developer.
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.
The subcritical facility might or might not ultimately eliminate the need for a prototype before moving to a full-scale reactor, depending on whether the test results and other analyses satisfy the safety concerns of regulators. But either way, it should provide crucial data about the feasibility of this approach, potentially making it easier to secure the funds and approvals necessary to move the project forward.
“If everybody has to wait for something to be built with billions of dollars at risk, it’s just going to hold us back,” Hu says.
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