Joint Research Centre says deployment no longer a distant aspiration
The deployment of molten salt reactors (MSRs) is no longer a distant aspiration, but coordinated action will be needed if projects are to be delivered on time, a conference in Germany has concluded.
Delegates at the 1st European Conference on Molten Salt Reactor Technology said action that needs to be taken includes shared standards, bankable projects, integrated licensing strategies and a European ecosystem that can efficiently deliver on time.
The conference, in Baden-Baden, was organised by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), which carries out research in various fields to provide independent advice to EU policymakers.
The JRC said: “The science is mature, the engineering is in hand, and private capital is ready to commit.
“The field has the concepts, the growing political will, and the industrial players.”
The JRC said the nuclear sector is becoming increasingly important in Europe’s clean technology and sustainable energy agenda. It warned that first of a kind projects require stable policies, risk reduction mechanisms, and viable partnerships.
MSRs have progressed from the conceptual stage to the point where real deployment questions are being asked, but qualified evidence is still needed, the JRC said. Fuel salt chemistry, materials corrosion and component lifetime are key challenges, but the EU “has the right competence to address them”. Safety, security and safeguards must be integrated from day one.
On deployment, the JRC said early regulatory dialogue and graded licensing are essential.
MSRs are nuclear fission reactors in which either the fuel and/or the coolant is a molten salt. Molten salt is salt which liquifies at elevated temperatures and can store massive amounts of thermal energy at atmospheric pressure.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says international interest in MSRs is increasing because they have the potential to provide large amounts of efficient and cost-effective electricity and produce high-temperature process heat usable for various industrial applications.
According to the IAEA, several MSR designs are under development and approaching deployment readiness. In Canada, a molten salt-based small modular reactor (SMR) concept passed a crucial pre-licensing vendor design review in 2023, the first such review completed for an MSR. Other projects, including in China and the US, continue to make progress, with the hope that MSRs could begin to see deployment as soon as the mid-2030s.
