Because the hot pump was a cantilever design, its shaft length was limited to about 3 m since longer shafts would have unacceptable vibration. Since no bearing materials had yet been demonstrated to work in hot (565ºC) salt, there was too much risk for the Solar Two project to implement a supported, vertical hot pump. If suitable bearing materials could be found, then hot pumps of much greater lengths could be made and fitted directly into the molten salt storage tanks. The molten salt system could be greatly simplified by eliminating the pump sumps, control and shutoff valves, associated piping, heat trace, sump  heaters,  level  controller  and  insulation. Furthermore, the efficiency of the thermal storage system would increase because the associated heat loss from the deleted components would be eliminated as well.