> That quote by Rickover is one reason we should fix the NRC process, so companies don't have to spend $300M and get nothing but a paper reactor.
(I didn't answer your previous points about the NRC process, but for the record, I completely agree with you.)
> Moltex Energy agrees with you on pumping fuel salt. They keep their liquid fuel in a fuel rod, open at the top, no pumping. All the rods are immersed in a pool of liquid salt coolant, which just sits there. Secondary coolant in pipes through through that.
Yes, Moltex is an interesting design. The main drawback, AFAICS, is that since the fuel concentration in the fuel salt is quite low compared to solid fuel designs, they have to use pretty enriched fuel. I think their current plans call for 40% Pu. And the breeding ratio is poor, around 0.5 according to a paper I skimmed through a while ago.
Yes, the "waste burner" design. So the entire fuel story revolves around having access to spent fuel which they can reprocess to extract the Pu.
Yes, they also have the thermal design which I'm quite sure requires much lower enrichment, but AFAICT is more a concept than something they're actively developing. It makes sense of course to focus on one design at a time, unless they have infinite money.
One of the other fast spectrum MSR startups, Elysium, also proposes using spent fuel + maybe leftover military Pu for startup. The interesting thing about Elysium is that their design at least breeds, so they only need enriched fuel for starting up. They're saying that they can run up to 40 years before needing to reprocess the fuel, just by adding U238 online to the salt.
(I didn't answer your previous points about the NRC process, but for the record, I completely agree with you.)
> Moltex Energy agrees with you on pumping fuel salt. They keep their liquid fuel in a fuel rod, open at the top, no pumping. All the rods are immersed in a pool of liquid salt coolant, which just sits there. Secondary coolant in pipes through through that.
Yes, Moltex is an interesting design. The main drawback, AFAICS, is that since the fuel concentration in the fuel salt is quite low compared to solid fuel designs, they have to use pretty enriched fuel. I think their current plans call for 40% Pu. And the breeding ratio is poor, around 0.5 according to a paper I skimmed through a while ago.