Molten salt reactors and uranium: a perfect fit?

Molten Salt Reactors were chosen as one of the six Generation IV reactors due to their numerous advantages in terms of overall safety, low cost potential, minimal long lived waste and superior resource utilization. These reactors are typically thought of as operating on the thorium to ²³³U cycle. However, all these advantages and still more are also true of simplified designs that employ no fuel processing and run off Low Enriched Uranium while requiring only a small fraction the uranium needs of LWR or CANDU designs. This paper will review the great potential of this often overlooked mode of operation and introduce new proposed designs. (author)