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NN Asks: What does it take to build a domestic fuel salt supply chain?
Adam Burak
We need facilities capable of converting uranium and thorium feedstocks into salts, as well as a source of thorium, if we are to build a domestic fuel salt supply chain.
Our current supply chain provides a potential pathway to produce one type of fuel salt. The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used uranium trifluoride/uranium tetrafluoride (UF3/4) as fuel in the late 1960s, and some current developers are following suit. Uranium hexafluoride (UF6) made as part of the enrichment process could be reduced to uranium fluoride salts with a +3 or +4 valence state. However, as oxygen and moisture are critical impurities for molten salt, a facility with the capability to properly handle molten salts would be necessary.
Michael P. Short (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Miaomiao Jin (Idaho National Laboratory), Ittinop Dumnernchanvanit (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Max Carlson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Sean Robertson (Transatomic Power Corporation), Gilberto Mota (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Alexandra R. Delmore (University of Wisconsin Madison), Akshay Dave (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Bren A. Philips (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Sidney Yip (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Benjamin S. Collins (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), Andrew T. Nelson (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), Dennis F. Hussey (Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)), Daniel M. Wells (Electric Power Research Institute), Jeff Deshon (Electric Power Research Institute), Naiqiang Zhang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Brian Kendrick (Los Alamos National Laboratory), Chris Stanek (Los Alamos National Laboratory), David Andersson (Los Alamos National Laboratory), Kenneth J. McClellan (Los Alamos National Laboratory), Brian D. Wirth (University of Tennessee Knoxville), Derek R. Gaston (Idaho National Laboratory), Cody J. Permann (Idaho National Laboratory), Richard C. Martineau (Idaho National Laboratory)
Proceedings | The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors Virtual Meeting | November 16-19, 2020 | Pages 461-466