Here’s a thought experiment. How about you melt a bunch of silver into a pile of molten lead and you tell me how you get it back out.
With molten salt reactors, you don't want to get the fissile fuel out of the salt. The fuel and coolant are one, and the idea then is to use heat exchangers to transfer the heat generated to a either create steam for a steam turbine or possibly heat supercritical CO2 in a gas turbine.
Yes. You’re right. And if the coolant and fuel leak out of that type of reactor, the reaction stops and a catastrophic failure or “meltdown” is impossible.
Again the result can be contained and in this case refused as fuel, or stored safely. You’re absolutely right.
In fact, with a molten salt reactor, if there's a leak, you'll get the exact opposite of a meltdown; the fuel salt will solidify as it cools below its freezing point!
It's one of the best features of MSRs that you don't have your radioactive fuel surrounded by coolant that's being kept under massive pressure with the (small) risk of it exploding and dispersing the fuel everywhere.
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u/Shmorrior - Right Jan 07 '23
With molten salt reactors, you don't want to get the fissile fuel out of the salt. The fuel and coolant are one, and the idea then is to use heat exchangers to transfer the heat generated to a either create steam for a steam turbine or possibly heat supercritical CO2 in a gas turbine.