RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Don't know about 'em? Don't worry, because even folks in the fields of alternative energy haven't heard of them, either (but that'll change shortly). The technology's been around for nearly 200 years, and it's pretty simple: table salt liquifies when subjected to great amounts of heat, at which point its useful properties become more apparent: good heat transfer characteristics; moves through piping pretty much like a fluid (only condenses when cool, instead of expanding like frozen water); can be mixed with other elements for the production of exotic metals (aluminum and titanium); and slapped together with coal and steam, can produce methanol (racing fuel). Historically, has never been commercialized, even though it's twice been used as reactor types (first, as an on-board energy source on a deep-penetration bomber for Cold War use back in 1954; then as a stand-alone energy supplier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Knoxville, Tennessee). Molten salt reactors will eventually replace water reactors for many reasons: they're meltdown-proof; they produce thousands of years of energy from a more-abundant resource than uranium; they require no fuel elements or reprocessing of those elements; safer waste disposal requirements (hundreds, instead of thousands of years of storage); can be constantly recycled; DOES NOT produce weapons-grade plutonium (and eliminates proliferation fears); and they double as chemical test facilities. The Solar Power Tower out in Dagget, California is the only test-bed in use now, where a sodium nitrite/nitrate mixture absorbs and stores mirror-focused heat from the sun; then that heat is transferred via exchanger to produce steam, which drives a turbine, which produces electricity. Regulatory constraints and poor public education are keeping MSRs down, but with oil getting more expensive to find, they'll end up in the news more and more.