New dawn for thorium reactor research

The first phase of the Salt Irradiation Experiment (SALIENT) has begun at the Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group in Petten, a nuclear research facility on the Dutch North Sea coast. The experiment is being carried out in cooperation with the European Commission Laboratory Joint Research Center-ITU (JRC) in Karlsruhe, Germany, and initially aims to produce cleaner reactor fuel, and will then look at materials for reactor construction. The last research into molten salt thorium reactors was carried out at the Oak Ridge laboratory in the US.

The Petten team is using the site’s high flux reactor under product manager Sander DeGroot and lead scientist Ralph Hania. Using the high heat inside the reactor, the team is melting a sample of thorium salt fuel — a mixture of lithium fluoride and thorium fluoride — inside an insulated graphite crucible, and over time the neutron bombardment will trigger nuclear reactions that will transmute the thorium in the sample into uranium isotopes that can undergo nuclear fission.