Re: For a slightly less charitable view of the MSR
A quick read of the article seems to show that the problems that were experienced at ORNL during the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment were mainly execution and engineering issues rather than problems with the theory. If a wire to a motor melts, that doesn't have anything to do with the reactor. If mistakes were made estimated thermal coupling to the cooling system so they could only run up to 80% of the planned output, that's another engineering problem that one hopes to catch in the R&D phase. I was never under the impression that what they had running only needed to be scaled up and duplicated a bunch of times. There were still a couple more iterations that encompassed a fuller embodiment of the total design so there was continuous processing of the core and blanket salts to remove contaminants. The article sort of misstates the usefulness of U233 in weapons. As a gamma emitter, it's too easy to detect from a distance even if it might be used. The gamma emissions are also a huge issue in trying to make a bomb with it. Any electronics could be doomed to fail.
I have yet to come across anything that would doom a LFTR design other than proper R&D and good execution of the design. I would rather not see any Sodium cooled reactors built and many fast breeder reactors sound horribly dangerous to operate since too many things can go wrong in a hurry.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
