Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

Re:Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? by acidburnNSA on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @09:38PM (#21330268)

I love how you say you're working on fission because it's at <1% of its potential. That's a really wise perspective.

> If all goes well, I'll be needing people in just about every specialization there.

How far along are you in the Oak Ridge guys' elaborately detailed Molten Salt Reactor development program plan from 1974 [1], as far as it's relevant? If parts of it are irrelevant, how significant are the things you have to do that they didn't?

[1] https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4227904

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Re:Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? by johnmorrison on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @09:59PM (#21330370)

There are some things that have become irrelevant for now, particularly the need for a stellite alloy. Most of the things we are doing differently from ORNL in our division for thermal MSRs is based on the progress in materials and CAD since the winding down of the ORNL MSRs.

There are a lot of promising mostly mix-able design choices in MSRs that have become apparent in the last few decades, so we are never fully committed to a particular set.

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