On July 3rd 2018, the Japanese Cabinet approved the “5th Strategic Energy Plan” that will guide the national energy policy going forward to 2030 or beyond. Referring to renewable energy as a core power source, it also continues to position nuclear power as an important base-load power source and maintains the current figures of share (20-22%) in FY2030 for Japan’s energy mix. It refers to “molten salt reactor” for the first time in Chapter 3 “Promotion of technology development” International forum on MSR was held at members hall of the Liberal-Democratic Party on June 2018. Presentations from ThorCon, Elysium and SINAP. Over 200 participants from nuclear Industry.
Breeding with closed cycle is essential for maximizing resource utilization and minimizing wastes, regardless of U or Th, solid or liquid.
Why can't SSR breed ?
Fluoride salt causes spectrum dip in critical energy range for breeding. Cl-35 (76%) in Chloride salt works as parasitic absorber (and produces Cl-36 as long-lived activation products over 4kg/GWt/year).
Static salt reactor has smaller fuel volume ratio. Any fuel salt contains less fuel material than solid fuel (per volume). Smaller actinide inventory in core means..
- less fertile so smaller fissile production
- less fissile so needs higher enrichment so less fertile
- large leakage effect so needs higher enrichment so less fertile
Separated salt (fuel/coolant) type reactor has advantages to limit circulation area of highly activated materials. However, it shows difficulty in breeding due to less HM inventory with large neutron leakage effect. If thorium is used for this fast spectrum reactor, worse result estimated. Combination of “molten salt fuel + liquid metal coolant” required for further consideration.
This talk was captured at Thorium Energy Conference 2018 (ThEC2018) in Brussels, Belgium. The footage may be recycled by for narrative purposes. Thorium Energy (World) conferences can be found here:
ThEC2018 videos are collected in this ThEC2018 Playlist:
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