Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor

The liquid fluoride thorium reactor, or LFTR, often pronounced lifter, is a type of molten salt reactor that uses the thorium fuel cycle with a fluoride-based molten salt, such as FLiBe, as both fuel carrier and coolant. Thorium-232 in the salt breeds into fissile uranium-233, which then undergoes fission to release energy. The physicist Alvin Weinberg pioneered LFTR development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the Aircraft Reactor Experiment in 1954 and the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment from 1965 to 1969 demonstrated the concept before research stalled in the early 1970s; renewed interest since has come from Japan, China, the United Kingdom and private companies.