Mark Halper reports that the U.S. Department of Energy is dusting off one of the old betamaxes of nuclear technology - The molten salt reactor. But with political will lacking at home, it will rise in China.
In 1973, the Nixon administration made a momentous decision that altered the course of civilian nuclear power. It fired the director of the renowned Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scuppering development of a reactor widely regarded as safer and superior to the complicated, inferior behemoths that define the global industry to this day.
Nixon banished a reactor that was virtually meltdown-proof, left comparatively little long-lived waste, made it more difficult to fashion a bomb from the waste, ran at friendlier atmospheric pressure instead of the potentially explosive pressurized environments of conventional reactors, and ran at much higher temperatures, making it more cost-effective as an electricity generator.
Under director Alvin Weinberg, Oak Ridge had built and run a small, experimental version of the so-called molten-salt reactor for five years. It was not perfect but it was a good start, and inventor Weinberg was preparing to improve it. Then the Nixon axe fell, leaving Oak Ridge all dressed up and nowhere to go as the keeper of a valuable, clean, safe nuclear energy technology a technology that today could go a long way toward moving the world onto a much needed source of power that does not emit carbon dioxide.
Decades later, the U.S. Department of Energy (which owns Oak Ridge) is slowly reawakening to the Weinberg vision. But this time, rather than build a molten-salt reactor itself because the U.S. currently lacks the political will and funding to do so, the U.S. is helping others, i.e., China and India.
Resource Portal for I2M Clients, Associates, and Geoscientists
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-