The World’s First Thorium Molten Salt Reactor

OILPRICE ^ | 21 Nov 2025 | Haley Zaremba

[nuke_road_warrior]

The First molten salt reactor experiment (MSRE) was conducted in the mid to late 60’s by ORNL. It was initially operated using U235 but was later switched to U233 (bred from U238).

Wikipedia article here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment

[Silentgypsy]

Well, that’s a relief.

[nuke_road_warrior]

Thorium is the way to go. You have to really mess things up on purpose to have a radioactive meltdown with a thorium reactor.

Thorium isn't a reactor fuel. thorium-232 is a fertile isotope that can absorb a neutron become thorium-233. Thorium-233 then decays by beta (electron) emission to become protactinium-233 which decays by beta emission to become uranium-233. The uranium-233 is then used to "fuel" the reactor. The Molten Salt Reactor design discussed in the article is a Thorium-Uranium breeder reactor. Its relative insensitivity to "melt down" is the molten salt coolant and solvent for the fuel and seed material. Although the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) demonstrated proof of concept there was a serious problem identified for long term operation. Fluoride induced inter granular stress corrosion in the Hastelloy N alloy used in the MSRE. Also the time for the production of usable amounts of U-233 is considerably longer than the similar uranium-238 to plutonium 239 production in Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactors (LMFBR).

[Zathras]

This is very true.
Laws passed during the Carter Admin makes extracting U235 from spent fuel illegal.

[DUMBGRUNT]

They are installing a micro nuclear reactor at the University of Illinois for heating the campus.

IIRC, the permitting process started in 2000, and they expect it to be operational in 2030.
Yes, ten years, but it is the first one.

“Illinois’s pioneering micro-modular nuclear reactor project, planned for campus energy and research. The presentation details the reactor’s design, including its unique TRISO fuel and molten salt energy storage. This innovative technology aims to provide a safe and sustainable energy source.”

https://youtu.be/KuUDWb3shzk?si=dzzV-sChHoaRzAE2

[GenXPolymath]

There is not a single gram of spent fuel buried in Nevada. There never should be either. Yucca Mountain is porous tuff ABOVE the water table with documented flows through the repository levels down into the lower strata. Not just no but HELL NO. As a hydrogeo I will fight to my last breath that location. I am 100% pro nuke, and also a hard core supporter of reprocessing and fast spectrum reactors.

Spent fuel should be reprocessed the fission products should be mixed with borosilica glass which is impervious to water and then cases in copper cans then stainless steel outer can. From there you either drill into geologically stable granite like Central Texas’s 1.2 billion year stable granite, or mine into salt layers such as the 250+ million year stable Permian salt beds in the Panhandle or drill vertical then horizontal into stable Permian shales also 250-299MY old and put those cans in the bottom. Done, bentonite cement them in and sleep the sleep of the righteous. Any of these three strata are impervious to fluid flows, geologically stable and below any water table. Fission products need 500 years at most to decay to under natural uranium levels from that point it’s lower than background radiation levels end of story.

Spent fuel is a political problem not a technical one. Yucca is a boondoggle of epic proportions and only purpose was to line the pockets of Congress critter donor’s and buddies nothing more.

[GenXPolymath]

“Laws passed during the Carter Admin makes extracting U235 from spent fuel illegal”

No , Carter nor any other POTUS has never passed a law Congress does that. Carter signed an executive order ending the NRC authorization of any reprocessing activities. This stood for decades, the Don has issued new EO to the DOE to eventually move the stored spent fuel from private storage to a government-owned, privately operated reprocessing and recycling facility. Carter’s traitor a$$ can’t stop the USA anymore. F him and F Clinton for cancelling the functional INF fast reactor.

Which btw the scientists tried to meltdown. First then pulled all the control rods out. The heat rise and the Doppler coefficient of metallic fuel kicked in and shut down the keff under 1. Then they shut off the coolant pumps and again the Doppler coefficient shut it down and the pool of molten sodium sitting in a air cooled guard vessel just sat there using natural air convection to take the decay heat away. Then they didn’t the absolute insanity of running the reactor up to 100% power and then pulled all the rods out AND shut the coolant pumps off. This would wreak a PWR or BWR reactor. Nope the INF just shut itself down and passively cooled itself down. Game set match no more tech is needed this is as safe as one can ask for a reactor you literally cannot melt it down physics says nope nope nope. Clinton killed it to save like 30 million in funding per year...no he killed it became it was unlimited energy at 1.3 breed ratio, melt down proof and only sent fission products to decay to under 500 year
And burned every element heavier than uranium while getting 83 terajoules per kilo of natural uranium. 100 times what a water reactor does. At those burn up levels you can mine seawater at $300 per kilo for uranium and it is still cheaper per BTU than a PWR by a factor of 50 it’s equal to 5 CENTS per barrel of oil on a BTU for BTU equivalent. The Chinese have proven $150 per kg of seawater uranium at the prototype scale and plan for $83 kg at commercial production. There is 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium in the ocean and 46 trillion tonnes in the top 5km of earth’s granite crust. Every single gram is accessible with the Chinese tech that grabs down to single part per billion levels 100% recovery rates in under 24 hours of time simply a game changing tech. Granite is 2-8ppm not ppb you can solution mine while producing geothermal heat via well bores. You get 15 megawatts per bore of geothermal and multiple tonnes per year of solution uranium yields per bore. The uranium is 83 terajoules per kilo in a fast reactor so millions of times the energy of the geothermal heat the heat is just a useful byproduct of the solution mining. HCL or SO4 1 molar plus F or NA dissolves all silicates you get not only uranium but also aluminum, titanium, magnesium, potassium, iron too. If you don’t want to break the silicates uranium will still come up with just hot water as it’s soluble in water as is you just get more doing silica leaching.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/9-key-takeaways-president-trumps-executive-orders-nuclear-energy

[ExpatCanuck]

Yes, that’s exactly what I was going to say next 😂.

[PIF]

China built 13 reactors of similar scale, and has 33 more on the way

—
Always trust what the CCP tells you it has achieved ...

[DUMBGRUNT]

—”Always trust what the CCP tells you it has achieved ...”

Pls name a government agency you always trust?
From any country.

[PIF]

So you trust the CCP? I never said anything about other governments - you are raising a strawman argument.

[redinIllinois]

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