"It's also non-corrosive, sidestepping an issue that puts a question mark over molten salt reactors." doesn't seem to line up with "Its fast-neutron reactor will use high-temperature liquid sodium as its reactor coolant" and "This heat is run through a molten salt thermal energy storage system". Either I'm failing to understand what salt is or something doesn't seem right there.

This is what need!

Excellent article, rich with facts, on nuclear reactors and their many advantages over any other form of grid scale power generation, including safety. Unfortunately it strayed into voodoo when it mentioned a prediction of an imaginary 300 million to 3 billion "premature deaths"over two centuries—with no scientific basis whatsoever—supposedly as a result of a 2°C global temperature rise. Put on your thinking cap for a second. Were there hundreds of millions to billions of premature deaths from the 1°C global warming since the late 1800's? Of course not. In fact humans flourished, expanding from a little over 1 billion to nearly 8 billion. Warming and the increase in atmospheric CO2 it produced (yes warming increases CO2) has been good for both animals and plants. A little more isn't an existential threat, it's a boon.

I look forward to seeing the demonstration plant up and running. If it works outside of the laboratory, this could give us reliable on-demand energy without some of the more difficult to manage parts of nuclear plants. Using reprocessed waste is a bonus.

Eating up old nuclear waste? That is absolutely phenomenal. I am 100% in. Just, how about the new radioactive waste?

Hi Chase, this reactor uses liquid sodium metal as the reactor coolant, which is not a salt. The heat is then transferred from the liquid metal coolant loop to the external molten salt thermal energy storage loop. The heat stored in the molten salt can then be used on demand to boil water and generate electricity with a steam turbine. I think the point the article is trying to make is that in this design there is no molten salt in the reactor itself.

Nuclear waste is like a deadly stain that can never be contained, only slowed down. Trying to react it again only makes things worse. We don't need it, and our heirs will get only the bill for ongoing maintenance.

Chase: I would guess it's a temperature difference, the core will run at a much higher temp than the store and corrosion correlates with heat. The salt thermal storage is already used for renewables.

Sodium can be a huge problem, because it's impossible to extinguish a Sodium fire. If you add water it produces Hydrogen which burns with air and sodium hydroxide which is highly corrosive.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor
A disadvantage of sodium is its chemical reactivity, which requires special precautions to prevent and suppress fires. If sodium comes into contact with water it reacts to produce sodium hydroxide and hydrogen, and the hydrogen burns when in contact with air.

In one place, the claimed benefit is that the generator is not a corrosive molten salt reactor. In another place, the claimed benefit is that energy is stored in a molten salt system. Every nuclear plant runs 24/7/365 except for refueling outages, so there is nothing unique about this one doing that. What the description does not say is whether this design has licensed operator personnel on duty on site 24/7/365, to stay prepared for the inevitable operational problems. Safe and nuclear do not belong together, ever. A below-ground reactor is an invitation to water-table contamination, with no way to ever get the radioactive waste out of that water table. Bad idea. This nuclear-industry-favorable writeup is not balanced by expert review or interview, so readers should consider going to the IEER.org web site and reading books like The Nuclear Power Deception, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free, Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer, and Insurmountable Risks.