I usually enjoy these kinds of articles. This time I’m not getting the upshot.
Why is this reactor type better than lftr’s liquid flouride thorium reactors? or a fusion reactor. —both of which not ready for prime time.
Is SAFIRE safer, less expensive... or is it just a new state of nature whose possibilities are being explored byo a nuclear reactor?
Explain the possibilities.
At this point, the last. BUT..if early indications pan out, it will be far less expensive and far easier to implement than "standard fusion" involving "tokamak-like" approaches, and far safer than any fission approach.
There is also the unique possibility that it will be able to remediate existing radioactive waste simply and cheaply.
Well, this isn’t actually a nuclear reactor. This is more like (if their theory is correct), creating a miniature sun in the laboratory.
That might sound like another kind of nuclear reactor, but under their theory, stars are not powered by nuclear fission or fusion at all, but are purely electrical/plasma phenomena.
This appears to be some kind of weird self-organizing magnetic containment field for fusion.
LFTR is fission. It’s a lot like trying to squeeze 2 magnets together when they wanna repel each other. That’s fusion. When all hell breaks loose and the SHTF, those magnets (and fusible material) will repel eachother and cease to react.
With fission, it’s like you’re trying to keep 2 magnets apart from each other when they really wanna attract and come together. So when all hell breaks loose — like an earthquake + tsunami at Fikushima — the 2 sides wanna join together and make all kinds of heat. Radioactive heat.