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  1. Dear Rod, in the other post about terrestrial you ask why sodium chloride isn’t used as the coolant in IMSR.
    The answer is neutronics.
    Moltex uses sodium chloride cause its a fast reactor. In a fast reactor NaCl is just fine.
    Both Na and Cl have some issues with moderated neutrons.
    On the other hand, Li F has excellent neutronics (except for the rarer Lithium isotopes which produces tritium), there’s also Be F which has the positive side effect of neutron multiplication. But Beryllium has health issues in some humans. Hence the famous F Li Be coolant.
    But Terrestrial has yet to announce its initial salt choice. It could even be NaCl, MSRs naturally have so many neutronic advantages over LWRs that they can even use NaCl and live with the somewhat worse neutronics to avoid the Tritium issues with nuclear regulators.

    On the NRC certification, I have every expectation that the NRC won’t be anywhere ready to truly start its certification work in 2019. In fact I expect the first IMSR to be fully operational before the NRC really starts working serious on USA certification for IMSR. Only when the US Congress is shamed that they’re being left behind that they will begin to address the issue. I can only hope the NRC will be forced to provide the same saner approach to SMRs approval that Canada and the UK is.

  2. I hope that Terrestrial has learned the lessons from the Westinghouse bankruptcy: do not compromise the cost competitiveness of your design to obtain NRC certification. If it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t work out. Of course you will miss out on the US market but that’s much better than bankruptcy.

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