Molten salt reactors (MSRs) can achieve much higher burn-up factors than conventional uranium reactors.
FORBES: A Pair of MIT Scientists Try to Transform Nuclear Power
The heat released by the molten salt is used to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.
Current molten salt mixes are typically 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate.
The storage system, called SolarPLUS, uses a heat exchanger to transfer some of the heat captured by the heliostats to the molten salt.
And some designs provide power round the clock, not just when the sun is shining, by storing energy in the form of molten salt.
ECONOMIST: A new type of power plant harnesses the sun��and taxpayers
Rather than create electricity by heating water and turning a turbine, Wilson's new reactor would use nuclear fission to produce energy from molten salt.
But as oil prices plunged in the Clinton era, the U.S. abandoned its grand solar experiment, and molten salt technology got shoved into cold storage.
BrightSource Energy, an energy company based in Oakland, California, has signed a deal with Southern California Edison, a utility, to implement a system that stores energy in molten salt.
In a small lab in the San Francisco Bay Area biotech hub of Emeryville, scientists at a startup called Halotechnics are sifting through thousands of mixtures of molten salt.
There are a number of different reactors in use, most commonly water-cooled pressurised or boiling water reactors - though other reactor types are kept cool with the help of liquid metal, gas or molten salt.
His idea: a better molten salt mixture that would store heat at higher temperatures to boost electricity production but that would remain liquid at lower temperatures so less energy would be diverted to keep it from solidifying.
He dreams of building gigawatt-size plants, of shipping solar thermal power to the cloudy Northeast and of using molten salt to store energy so thermal plants can power homes at night. (Nevada Solar One is only for daytime peak loads.) He envisions mirrors in space that can soak up sunlight 24 hours a day.
Rival ideas withered, among them the thorium liquid-fuel reactor, powered by molten fluoride salt containing thorium.
Have you ever been playing around with molten metal salt, when you accidentally created hollow, soft-shelled particles that could one day increase hard disk storage or power future QLED displays?
ENGADGET: Researchers stumble onto 'lava' generated quantum dots, could power future peripherals
应用推荐