US and China to cooperate on salt-cooled reactors

摘要

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the US and China's Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (Sinap) met at the end of March to begin planning the next steps in a shared project for the advancement of salt-cooled nuclear reactors, according to a statement from ORNL. The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between ORNL and Sinap focuses on accelerating scientific understanding and technical development especially of fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactors. ORNL has experience in the design, construction and operation of the molten salt reactor experiment, the only molten-salt reactor ever built. Sinap will be in charge of building the reactor in China. The cooperation will help to ensure that US manufacturers have the opportunity to compete in future salt-cooled reactor markets, ORNL said.