Slashdot Mirror
World's First Molten-Salt Solar Plant Opens
An anonymous reader writes "Sicily has just announced the opening of the world's first concentrated solar power (CSP) facility that uses molten salt as a heat collection medium. Since molten salt is able to reach very high temperatures (over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit) and can hold more heat than the synthetic oil used in other CSP plants, the plant is able to continue to produce electricity long after the sun has gone down. The Archimede plant has a capacity of 5 megawatts with a field of 30,000 square meters of mirrors and more than 3 miles of heat collecting piping for the molten salt. The cost for this initial plant was around 60 million Euros."
... is this plant kosher?
Only used by niggers.
It was called the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, dumbass. The only reason we're not using them now is because we had a nuclear arsenal to build back in the 70's. Other liquid metal reactors (which are a sight more temperamental since Sodium can burn) have been operated successfully. l2nuclear, please.
Having said that, I'm confident that the technology is back on the path to commercialization since Thorium breeding in PWRs is getting so much attention. I'm willing to bet that there will be plants operational before 2030. (And it's fair to assume that they won't be in America because the NRC is still beholden to the dicksucking Greenpeace crowd.) Molten salt works, it works well, and if anything these solar plants will help by ramping up the production of salt-friendly piping and pumps ahead of time. Salt-based CST shouldn't be treated as the solar messiah (since at the current, reasonable, practical scale we're working at solar power can only be supplemental; it can't carry the grid) but instead as a proving ground for technologies that will one day make up the heart of nuclear plants that can actually satisfy an appreciable fraction of our demand. Nuclear is the 'one true energy', because renewables will never overcome the problem of being too diffuse and unreliable and fossil fuels are on their way out whether we like it or not.