Canadian company Terrestrial Energy is to collaborate with the USA's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to develop its molten salt reactor to the engineering blueprint stage.
Molten salt reactors (MSRs) use fuel dissolved in a molten fluoride or chloride salt. As an MSR fuel salt is a liquid, it functions as both the fuel (producing the heat) and the coolant (transporting the heat away and ultimately to the power plant). This means that such a reactor could not suffer from a loss of coolant leading to a meltdown. The basic technology is not new - it was first demonstrated at ORNL in the 1960s, where a 7.4 Wt test reactor, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), operated from 1965 to 1969.
Terrestrial's Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) builds on that early work and also on ORNL's later Denatured Molten Salt Reactor (DMSR) design. Indeed, several former ORNL scientists sit on Terrestrial Energy's advisory board, and Terrestrial Energy CEO Simon Irish explained to World Nuclear News that it makes "absolute sense" to work with ORNL which already has the expertise and experience with the design from which IMSR evolved.
The collaboration with ORNL is expected to enable the IMSR to complete the conceptual design stage - where all design parameters are fully specified to start preparing engineering blueprints - in late 2016.
Terrestrial Energy's standout feature over other MSR projects active today, Irish said, is that it already has a reactor design specified to a recognised industrial level, putting the company in a strong market position. All of Terrestrial Energy's decisions are to simplify and speed a commercial molten salt reactor to market. They will still have a reactor that will greatly lower the costs and have improved efficiency over todays pressure water and boiler water nuclear reactors.
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Molten salt reactors (MSRs) use fuel dissolved in a molten fluoride or chloride salt. As an MSR fuel salt is a liquid, it functions as both the fuel (producing the heat) and the coolant (transporting the heat away and ultimately to the power plant). This means that such a reactor could not suffer from a loss of coolant leading to a meltdown. The basic technology is not new - it was first demonstrated at ORNL in the 1960s, where a 7.4 Wt test reactor, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), operated from 1965 to 1969.
Terrestrial's Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) builds on that early work and also on ORNL's later Denatured Molten Salt Reactor (DMSR) design. Indeed, several former ORNL scientists sit on Terrestrial Energy's advisory board, and Terrestrial Energy CEO Simon Irish explained to World Nuclear News that it makes "absolute sense" to work with ORNL which already has the expertise and experience with the design from which IMSR evolved.
The collaboration with ORNL is expected to enable the IMSR to complete the conceptual design stage - where all design parameters are fully specified to start preparing engineering blueprints - in late 2016.
Terrestrial Energy's standout feature over other MSR projects active today, Irish said, is that it already has a reactor design specified to a recognised industrial level, putting the company in a strong market position. All of Terrestrial Energy's decisions are to simplify and speed a commercial molten salt reactor to market. They will still have a reactor that will greatly lower the costs and have improved efficiency over todays pressure water and boiler water nuclear reactors.
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