Hard Materials Seminar - "Molten salts and nuclear reactors: a matter of chemistry"

Due to their advantageous thermophysical and neutronic properties, molten salts are proposed in a variety of roles across advanced fission (both fast and thermal spectrum) and fusion reactors (both inertial and magnetic confinement) to help achieve high operating temperatures, intrinsic safety, and improved economics in power generation. In all these systems, the chemical behavior of molten salts is crucial towards reactor design needs such as corrosion mitigation, tritium management, on-line sensing, chemistry control. This talk will provide an introduction on molten salt chemistry, discussing how molten salt physical and chemical properties affect their behavior in nuclear reactors, providing examples of the outstanding chemistry and materials challenges, and describing how the Advanced Blankets & Coolants Lab at UIUC is working towards addressing them.