Idaho Lab Produces World's First Molten Salt Fuel for Nuclear Reactors (energy.gov) 43
America's Energy Department runs a research lab in Idaho — and this week announced successful results from a ground-breaking experiment. "This is the first time in history that chloride-based molten salt fuel has been produced for a fast reactor," says Bill Phillips, the lab's technical lead for salt synthesis. He calls it "a major milestone for American innovation and a clear signal of our national commitment to advanced nuclear energy."
Unlike traditional reactors that use solid fuel rods and water as a coolant, most molten salt reactors rely on liquid fuel — a mixture of salts containing fissile material. This design allows for higher operating temperatures, better fuel efficiency, and enhanced safety. It also opens the door to new applications, including compact nuclear systems for ships and remote installations.
"The Molten Chloride Fast Reactor represents a paradigm shift in the nuclear fuel cycle, and the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) will directly inform the commercialization of that reactor," said Jeff Latkowski, senior vice president of TerraPower and program director for the Molten Chloride Fast Reactor. "Working with world-leading organizations such as INL to successfully synthesize this unique new fuel demonstrates how real progress in Gen IV nuclear is being made together."
"The implications for the maritime industry are significant," said Don Wood, senior technical advisor for MCRE. "Molten salt reactors could provide ships with highly efficient, low-maintenance nuclear power, reducing emissions and enabling long-range, uninterrupted travel. The technology could spark the rise of a new nuclear sector — one that is mobile, scalable and globally transformative.
More details from America's Energy Department: MCRE will require a total of 72 to 75 batches of fuel salt to go critical, making it the largest fuel production effort at INL since the operations of Experimental Breeder Reactor-II more than 30 years ago. The full-scale demonstration of the new fuel salt synthesis line for MCRE was made possible by a breakthrough in 2024. After years of testing, the team found the right recipe to convert 95 percent of uranium metal feedstock into 18 kilograms of uranium chloride fuel salt in only a few hours — a process that previously took more than a week to complete...
After delivering the first batch of fuel salt this fall, the team anticipates delivering four additional batches by March of 2026. MCRE is anticipated to run in 2028 for approximately six months at INL in the Laboratory for Operation and Testing (LOTUS) in the United States test bed.
"With the first batch of fuel salt successfully created at INL, researchers will now conduct testing to better understand the physics of the process, with a goal of moving the process to a commercial scale over the next decade," says Cowboy State Daily.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
"The Molten Chloride Fast Reactor represents a paradigm shift in the nuclear fuel cycle, and the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) will directly inform the commercialization of that reactor," said Jeff Latkowski, senior vice president of TerraPower and program director for the Molten Chloride Fast Reactor. "Working with world-leading organizations such as INL to successfully synthesize this unique new fuel demonstrates how real progress in Gen IV nuclear is being made together."
"The implications for the maritime industry are significant," said Don Wood, senior technical advisor for MCRE. "Molten salt reactors could provide ships with highly efficient, low-maintenance nuclear power, reducing emissions and enabling long-range, uninterrupted travel. The technology could spark the rise of a new nuclear sector — one that is mobile, scalable and globally transformative.
More details from America's Energy Department: MCRE will require a total of 72 to 75 batches of fuel salt to go critical, making it the largest fuel production effort at INL since the operations of Experimental Breeder Reactor-II more than 30 years ago. The full-scale demonstration of the new fuel salt synthesis line for MCRE was made possible by a breakthrough in 2024. After years of testing, the team found the right recipe to convert 95 percent of uranium metal feedstock into 18 kilograms of uranium chloride fuel salt in only a few hours — a process that previously took more than a week to complete...
After delivering the first batch of fuel salt this fall, the team anticipates delivering four additional batches by March of 2026. MCRE is anticipated to run in 2028 for approximately six months at INL in the Laboratory for Operation and Testing (LOTUS) in the United States test bed.
"With the first batch of fuel salt successfully created at INL, researchers will now conduct testing to better understand the physics of the process, with a goal of moving the process to a commercial scale over the next decade," says Cowboy State Daily.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
Read this as Morton Salt (Score:5, Funny)
Waste (Score:2)
Molten salt reactors could provide ships with highly efficient, low-maintenance nuclear power
And when it's spent, we'll just dunp it in the ocean. Because it's just salt! /s
Incorrect headline (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, and "moving the process to a commercial scale over the next decade".
Corroding Mess, 1st Reactor Not Decommissioned (Score:3)
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As is typical of all these supposed breakthroughs. We have this incredible world changing technology! The problem is the material needed to make it work doesn't exist.
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Yep. The nuclear industry is famous for its bombastic empty promises. And the morons believing them.
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Also, these things breed plutonium, as in, white flash in your city when terrorists get a hold of it.
If terrorists wanted to wreak havoc with plutonium, it would be extremely difficult for them to build a bomb with it. They'd find it much easier just to sprinkle it into the water supply. Plutonium is highly toxic.
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>They'd find it much easier just to sprinkle [plutonium] into the water supply.
OT: I'm much more worried about bad guys using guardrail-free AI to find a do-it-yourself recipe to turn readily available materials into something that can poison the water supply or environment.
Imagine if there is some combination of things readily available at your hardware/big-box store that you can put together to make a toxic-cloud-bomb that will put everyone within a few hundred feet in the hospital or worse.* Now ima
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Plutonium that's mixed/dissolved in molten salt. If the baddies have enough access to be processing the fuel themselves, me thinks you have bigger problems.
To me the real benefits of these is that they can literally eat our existing uranium pellet waste.
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Moltex Energy [moltexenergy.com] has more practical and cost effective molten salt reactor designs. They put the molten salt fuel in tubes with a coating that prevents corrosion by a mechanism similar to galvanization. The fuel is not pumped.
Ian Scott, one of their lead engineers, explained during a talk [youtube.com] that the complex molten salt reactor designs with pumped fuel stemmed from a decision to not rely on convection for heat transfer during the Aircraft Reactor Experiment where molten salt reactors were first considered. Thi
Inconceivable (Score:5, Informative)
The downside is that they slowly produce Plutonium and that their intended lifetime is the engineering lifetime of the machine materials -- with catastrophic failure when someone decides to save a little money on maintenance or run the "engine" longer than initially agreed to. The very idea of these things becoming available to an American corporation is a bit terrifying. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that we cannot trust the organizations that these reactors would be marketed to.
Upvote parent! (Score:2)
Thank you for pointing out these "minor details" of this "nuclear-fission-including-all-of-its-problems on steoroids".
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>Thank you for pointing out these "minor details" of this "nuclear-fission-including-all-of-its-problems on steoroids".
Don't worry, the fission products will damage the steroids rendering them inert. :)
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I also don't understand why you're terrified by the idea of a corporation having access to nuclear reactors, as if they didn't already. I mean, you do know that our nuclear power plants are privately owned already, right?
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Producting plutonium isn't as much of a concerns as what particular isotope of plutonium they produce.
Produce Plutonium 240 or 241? No problem, 241 contaminates weapons because it spontaneously fissions and will cause a weapon with more than a single-digit percent of 241 to "fissile" and just make a localized mess.
Produce Plutonium 239 and no other Pu isotope? Weapons proliferation concerns, won't ever get built in the US.
For what it's worth, all commercial power reactors produce plutonium as part of thei
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>And there is no known way to perform isotope separation on Plutonium
Someone in North Korea either read this and said to himself either "as far as you know" or "challenge accepted."
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Produce Plutonium 240 or 241? No problem, 241 contaminates weapons because it spontaneously fissions and will cause a weapon with more than a single-digit percent of 241 to "fissile" and just make a localized mess
Actually, you're one-off: Pu-240 is the isotope that spontaneously-fissions enough to make plutonium in used reactor fuel useless as well as a major neutron hazard. Pu-241 decays into Americium-241, the alpha source used in smoke detectors (and also fissile but not really SF); it's also the alternative fuel for RTG's to replace Pu-238, though it emits some low energy gamma.
How... (Score:3)
are they going to keep it molten while they are waiting for the reactor to be built?
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are they going to keep it molten while they are waiting for the reactor to be built?
Yes, but they're still trying to agree on a schedule for tending the fire.
Build that reactor (Score:2)
And then run it without incident and good uptimes for at the very least 5 years. At that time I will start listening.
Before? The whole thing is just fantasies and hopes and dreams, no substance.
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I'm starting to think a site specializing in "news" about proven technologies might be up your alley. Nothing about research or up and coming stuff, only articles about things that have been working for years.
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It is called "sane and solid engineering" and "not falling for any mindless hype". I guess you lack experience with both of these.
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Moltex Energy has some practical reactor designs in this area. They're actually working on building one.
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Ah, didn't read your comment closely enough and missed the insult. I work as an electrical engineer, but I don't work on anything fancy and can guarantee you that nothing I work on would be a good topic for technology news. It's still interesting to me, which is enough.
It's probably a good thing that there are people researching more "out there" designs or techology. If they succeed, great. If they don't, odds are they learn something useful along the way and maybe even develop spinoff technology, techn
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Your comment does not make sense, hence I interpreted it as insult and gave right back. A prototype that has been running 5 years without major problems is a successfully proven prototype but in no way "proven technology". That requires a bit more.
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The sort of things you're asking for are not the kinds of things that show up on technology news sites, which often cover new technology or research.
I just find it curious that you frequently comment on here to the effect that the topic of the article is vaporware or unproven or unlikely to work, etc. It's tech news. It's about forward looking stuff.
Maybe there's a "proven technology monthly" magazine or something. I don't know. Or maybe you enjoy posting these things for whatever reason, but the whole
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I am mainly commenting on not very smart people regarding "pie in the sky" news as "we will have this soon". If you do not like that, stop reading my posts?
Two questions come to mind (Score:4, Insightful)
1) What are the maintenance requirements for this and are they competitive with the shipping industry's goal of employing the cheapest 3rd world labour they can get their hands on?
2) Are there negative implications to these reactors becoming one of the 20-40 ships per year that end up on the bottom of the ocean?
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Are there negative implications to these reactors becoming one of the 20-40 ships per year that end up on the bottom of the ocean?
That was the first question that came to mind.
Break Out the Champagne at under $100/MWh (Score:2)
$100/MWh isn't remotely competitive any more, mostly, but because of the "base-load" need, you might get that much. If it can't produce power cheaper than that, though, it won't fly.
Nuclear dreams are now in a race with batteries, basically - if batteries get down to $20/kWh as the CAPEX, keeping around enough batteries for a dunkelflaute every few years, starts to compete with $100/MWh of baseload.
And then there's geothermal, just a big question mark right now, but the chancers doing pilot plants are de
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"Nuclear dreams are now in a race with batteries, basically - if batteries get down to $20/kWh as the CAPEX, keeping around enough batteries for a dunkelflaute every few years, starts to compete with $100/MWh of baseload."
Every few years? Every other week in the winter. 8000 tons of batteries to get one 50 MW data center through a 15 hour winter night, and I keep hearing about much larger date centers.
I have my doubts about molten salt being safe with any metal. EBR 2 passed all its safety tests, but whethe
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8000 tons is irrelevant in a station building scenario.
Individual data centers already have dozens of shipping container sized diesel generators, so space isn't exactly at a premium.
The only reason batteries might not be able to fill the gap is simply ingredient supply - and new chemistries are being developed every year.
Which isotopes... (Score:2)
Creating the fuel was the easiest part... (Score:2)
I'll Be Dead But Good Luck To The Rest Of You (Score:2)
Molten Salt Fuel is Not New (Score:2)
Great... (Score:2)