sen-no-sen wrote:At 36 'he confirms what I noted above: for the moment we do not yet know how to operate a molten salt reactor continuously.
This is only true for the version currently being tested by the Chinese; the versions studied by the other countries (including France and Europe) practically all include a permanent purification system (of the order of 20 to 40 L per day) which evacuates the various fission products liable to poison the reaction. It is fairly basic chemistry, the gaseous products evacuating themselves at the top of the vessel, and the rest of the “fuel” being subjected to the necessary chemical treatments before being reinjected into the reactor core; the only remaining problem to be solved is that of zirconium (the research track, which remains to be validated, is that of a "cold trap" on the bypass line, allowing the condensation of this metal).
The latest developments, and problems, are fairly well summarized in the proceedings of the Massy conference (
https://irfu.cea.fr/Meetings/seminaires ... rs2018.pdf), with a complete update on the state of studies in progress in the various countries of the world.
Very complete document on the "molten salts" branch:
https://fissionliquide.fr/tag/sel-fondu/In addition, the most fanciful figures circulate on the net concerning the CO2 emissions of nuclear power.
Several details: an essential part of this CO2 comes from the uranium enrichment process, which uses a lot of electrical energy. It is clear that the final balance will strongly depend on the production of this electricity (carbon or carbon-free); in France, a country with very low-carbon electricity, nuclear energy emits around 4g of CO2 per kWh, while in China (electricity mainly produced by coal) the final balance is rather 80-100g per kWh. Add to this certain malicious attentions (some of which are specialists) and we can easily understand the variety of figures circulating.
It should be noted that the molten salt sector, using by nature non-enriched fuels, definitively resolves this problem.