WASH-1222 Revisited: The Blueprint for America’s Abandoned Liquid Thorium Future

👥 Authors

While the exact named individuals are not listed on the title page, the document was produced by:

• Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
  under the auspices of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
  Specifically from the Molten-Salt Reactor Program (MSRP), as part of the WASH report series

Contributors include many prominent engineers and nuclear physicists active in molten salt reactor development from the 1950s–1970s, such as:

• R.C. Robertson

• H.G. MacPherson

• P.N. Haubenreich
  (These names are prominent throughout the body of the MSR program's documentation.)

🧪 Summary

Title: WASH-1222: Evaluation of Molten Salt Breeder Reactor Systems, July 1972

Prepared by: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, under contract with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission

This 1972 report presents a comprehensive evaluation of Molten Salt Breeder Reactors (MSBRs)—one of the most innovative and ambitious reactor designs of the 20th century. It was developed as part of the effort to assess alternatives to solid-fueled fast breeders like the LMFBR (Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor).

Key Insights:

🔧 Technical Design and Operation

• MSBRs use liquid fluoride salt as both fuel and coolant, operating around 650°C at atmospheric pressure, enabling compact designs, passive safety, and online reprocessing.

• The core is graphite-moderated with circulating fuel, enabling continuous removal of fission products and refueling during operation.

♻️ Fuel Cycle and Breeding

• The report emphasizes thorium fuel cycles, with U-233 bred from thorium.

• Highlights the negative temperature coefficient, making the design inherently safe against runaway reactions.

• Evaluates reprocessing systems for extracting protactinium-233 and fission products, including gas sparging and chemical separation technologies.
  

🔬 Materials and Corrosion

• Provides early assessments of Hastelloy-N, graphite lifetime, salt chemistry, and the corrosive nature of fission product interactions.

• Proposes component lifetimes and maintenance schedules, which would later influence next-gen designs like MSFRs.

💰 Economics and Deployment

• Includes cost estimates and energy output comparisons vs. contemporary LWRs and sodium-cooled breeders.

• Identifies MSBRs as a long-term strategy to expand nuclear power while conserving uranium resources and reducing proliferation risks.

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🕯️ The Fire We Refused: On the Betrayal and Resurrection of the Molten Salt Reactor

“To demand 'practicality' is to demand that men live as if reality were not real.”
— Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

In the summer of 1972, a quiet document was laid before the bureaucratic monolith of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. It was titled WASH-1222: Evaluation of Molten Salt Breeder Reactor Systems. It bore no slogans, no celebrity endorsements, no sentimental appeals to the heartstrings of the masses. Instead, it spoke in the precise, rational language of engineering, thermodynamics, and nuclear physics. It described the architecture of a machine—an engine of Promethean fire—that could lift civilization out of the muck of scarcity and submission.

And yet, we buried it.

Not because it failed. But because it succeeded too well.

🔥 The Unchained Atom

The Molten Salt Reactor is not merely a machine—it is a rebuke. A rebuke to the timid, to the bureaucrat, to the collectivist mind that cowers before complexity and bows before the altar of conformity. WASH-1222 reveals a reactor that operates not with fear, but with confidence in natural law: low pressure, passive safety, online fuel reprocessing, and the elegance of a thorium fuel cycle. It is a design so rational, so clean, so self-sustaining that it shatters the false dichotomy between technological progress and environmental stewardship.

And that—precisely that—is why it was abandoned.

To champion the MSR in 1972 was to declare that man is competent to manage his destiny. It was to admit that the world does not need "sustainability panels," carbon indulgences, or tribal chants about Mother Earth. It needs men who think—men who design, build, and take responsibility for the consequences of their own minds.

But Washington, wrapped in the fog of the Nixon years, addicted to pork-barrel LMFBR projects, and eager to placate both the defense complex and the anti-nuclear mobs, chose instead to extinguish the spark. We do not build this, they decided. We do not trust man with his own mind.

🌍 The Return of the Rational

Half a century has passed. The darkness grew. Today we kneel before wind turbines that freeze in winter, solar panels made in communist factories, and diesel-powered emergency backup grids masquerading as green.

But the truth is patient. The truth does not fade. Around the world, embers from WASH-1222 glow once again.

• In Copenhagen, Denmark's Seaborg Technologies is building molten salt reactors small enough to power islands.

• In Canada, Terrestrial Energy advances the Integral MSR with private capital and regulatory clarity.

• In China, a nation that does not apologize for ambition, thorium MSRs are under construction in the Gobi Desert.

• Even in Oak Ridge, echoes of the original 1960s reactor pulse beneath the surface of new Department of Energy programs and lab research.

The world is remembering what it once knew: that there is no morality in poverty, no dignity in stagnation, and no future in fear.

🚀 Morality Reclaimed Through Energy

What WASH-1222 offered was not simply a technical specification—it was a moral declaration. That human life is sacred, that progress is not optional, and that the mind is the proper tool of man’s survival.

Molten Salt Reactors are not green energy. They are moral energy. They do not placate Gaia—they serve man. They do not regress to pre-industrial fantasy—they leap forward to a rational future where energy abundance liberates every individual from dependence.

To resurrect WASH-1222 is to reject the guilt-ridden narratives of climate apocalypse and embrace a world built not on sacrifice but on achievement.

🛠️ Build It, or Be Ruled By Those Who Won’t

If America wishes to lead again, it must remember what it once stood for: not managed decline, but unbounded ascent.

It must fund research not because it is “equitable,” but because it is excellent. It must streamline regulation not to please industry, but to remove the fetters from those who still dare to think. And it must say to the world: we have the technology. We have the knowledge. And we no longer apologize for using it.

WASH-1222 is not a relic. It is a prophecy. And its time has come.

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
— Ayn Rand

Let that be the battle cry of every molten salt engineer, every policy reformer, every nation that refuses to kneel. We do not beg for energy. We build it.

And we will not stop.

By Miranda Morrow