Scientists want to test plans for a transportable molten-salt reactor by piggybacking on their existing nuclear facility.
Scientists at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory have devised an unconventional plan for accelerating the development of a small, safe, cheap nuclear reactor: they want to build a prototype that piggybacks on their existing facility.
Since the planned one-megawatt demonstration reactor would be incapable of sustaining a fission reaction on its own, the researchers believe they could avoid building a standalone experimental prototype, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission generally requires. That site selection and licensing process can take a decade or longer, so the hope is that this approach could cost hundreds of millions of dollars less and take half as much time to build.
The university lab operates a six-megawatt light-water-cooled research reactor on the northwest side of campus, housed within a powder-blue steel and concrete containment building. The proposed “subcritical facility” would be built adjacent to the hexagonal core, taking over a pair of medical irradiation rooms once used for experimental cancer treatments.
