Oak Ridge Today

A great technical achievement, Molten Salt Reactor could be entombed

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The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment building at Oak Ridge National Laboratory housed the reactor and offices for operating personnel. The facility was constructed in the 1950s for a nuclear aircraft project and was later expanded significantly and retrofitted to accommodate the MSRE. (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy/Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment building at Oak Ridge National Laboratory housed the reactor and offices for operating personnel. The facility was constructed in the 1950s for a nuclear aircraft project and was later expanded significantly and retrofitted to accommodate the MSRE. (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy/Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

 

Note: This story was updated at 8:30 p.m.

Former director Alvin Weinberg once called it the greatest technical achievement at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was inspired by the campaign to build a nuclear-powered aircraft in the 1950s, and it was the first reactor to ever operate using uranium-233.

Now parts of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment that are too radioactively “hot” for humans could be entombed in concrete.

For now, the idea is only under study, and there is no guarantee that any part of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, a nuclear historic landmark that has been dormant for decades, will be entombed.

But it’s one of the proposals being evaluated by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management. The goal is to finish the evaluation by the end of the year.

Jay Mullis, manager of the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, presented the proposal to the Oak Ridge City Council and Site Specific Advisory Board in two separate meetings earlier this month. The entombment proposal is one of five items being evaluated as part of a 45-day review started by DOE’s Environmental Management, or EM, program in June. [Read more…]

High Flux Isotope Reactor at ORNL named Nuclear Historic Landmark

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High Flux Isotope Reactor at ORNL

The High Flux Isotope Reactor vessel at Oak Ridge National Laboratory resides in a pool of water illuminated by the blue glow of the Cherenkov radiation effect. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

 

The High Flux Isotope Reactor, or HFIR, now in its 48th year of providing neutrons for research and isotope production at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been designated a Nuclear Historic Landmark by the American Nuclear Society.

“This designation from the ANS recognizes HFIR’s role in the history of the nuclear age, but it also speaks to the excellence of its design and operation,” ORNL Director Thom Mason said. “HFIR remains one of the world’s most capable reactor-based neutron science, radioisotope production, and materials irradiation facilities, and we expect that to continue for many years.”

The designation was proposed by the ANS honors and awards committee and approved on initial ballot by the board of directors.

“The ANS Nuclear Historic Landmark signifies that a nuclear facility has played an important role in nuclear science and engineering,” ANS President Michaele C. Brady Raap said. “HFIR, with its preeminent role in isotope production and neutron science, certainly meets that criteria.”

The reactor was conceived in the late 1950s as a production reactor to meet anticipated demand for transuranic isotopes (“heavy” elements such as plutonium and curium). HFIR today is a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility and one of the world’s sole sources of the radioisotope californium-252, used in industry and medicine. ORNL is a DOE lab. [Read more…]