Matthew Memmott is a Brigham Young University professor and nuclear engineering expert. He and his team have designed a new system for safer nuclear energy production. Their new system is a molten salt micro-reactor that may solve many problems with nuclear power.
Unlike the current light water nuclear power reactors, Memmott’s new reactor stores radioactive materials in a liquid salt instead of fuel rods. He said, “Nuclear energy can be extremely safe and extremely affordable, if done the right way. It's a very good solution to the energy situation we're in because there are no emissions or pollution from it.”
In Memmott’s new reactor, all the radioactive byproducts are dissolved in molten salt. Nuclear waste can emit heat and/or radioactivity for hundreds of thousands of years. This is why finding a safe way to dispose of nuclear waste has been so difficult. But, salt has an extremely high melting temperature of a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Molten salt cools rapidly and will drop below that temperature very quickly. Once the salt crystalized, the radiated heat will be absorbed into the salt and does not remelt it. This negates the danger of a nuclear meltdown.
Another benefit from the molten salt reactor is that it has the potential to completely eliminate dangerous nuclear waste. The products of the nuclear reactions are safely contained in the salt. There is no need to store them elsewhere. Many of these products are valuable. They can be removed from the salt and sold.
Molybdenum-99 is an extremely expensive element used in medical imaging procedures and scans. It can be extracted from molten salt. The U.S. currently purchases all of its Molybdenum-99 from the Netherlands. Extraction from the new reactor would make it more accessible and affordable. Cobalt-60, gold, platinum, neodymium and many other useful elements can also be removed from the salt. These extractions could potentially eliminate nuclear waste completely. Memmott said, “As we pulled out valuable elements, we found we could also remove oxygen and hydrogen. Through this process, we can make the salt fully clean again and reuse it. We can recycle the salt indefinitely.”
A typical commercial nuclear power reactor requires about one square mile to operate to reduce radiation risk. The core alone is thirty feet by thirty feet. Memmott’s reactor is four feet by seven feet. The new reactor can generate about a megawatt which could power around a thousand homes. Everything needed to run this reactor is designed to fit onto a forty-foot truck bed. This means that this reactor can make power accessible to even remote places.
Other members of Memmott’s team include re BYU professors Troy Munro, Stella Nickerson, John Harb, Yuri Hovanski, Ben Frandsen, and BYU graduate student Andrew Larsen.
Memmott remarked that “For the last 60 years, people have had the gut reaction that nuclear is bad, it's big, it's dangerous. Those perceptions are based on potential issues for generation one but having the molten salt reactor is the equivalent of having a silicon chip. We can have smaller, safer, cheaper reactors and get rid of those problems.”