What Is A LFTR, and How Can A Reactor Be So Safe?: Molten Salt Reactors, including Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors

What if we could design and build a reactor : - that uses no water and so can't have high pressure steam or hydrogen explosions, - that fissions over 99% of its fuel so there's no waste to store for hundreds of thousands of years, - with fuel that can't have a nuclear melt down, can never get hot enough to melt the reactor vessel? Well, we've already built one, and we ran it for 5 years! (But you never heard about it...) A Molten Salt Reactor, such as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) produces energy using a liquid (molten) nuclear fuel, not a solid fuel. MSRs also use a coolant that remains liquid at atmospheric pressure. With liquid fuel and atmospheric pressures, LFTRs solve the safety and waste disposal problems our current (1970's design) light water reactors (LWR) have. Some types of MSR can fission "spent" nuclear fuel from other reactors, eliminating the long term nuclear waste problem completely. George Lerner is an expert at solving complex technical & communication problems, in controversial fields such as alternative energy, health care, climate change. He can communicate complex ideas clearly, even to emotionally invested or polarized people. In this book, you will learn - how LFTRs work, - how they can be so much safer, - how Molten Salt Reactors are completely different than LWR, - what it will take to build them, - technical and regulatory challenges still to be solved, - how they will fare in accidents, - the economics of designing and operating them.