Posted on 07/28/2021 10:27:48 AM PDT by dynachrome
How much can you trust Red China? There things always break. How safe can they be?
How much can you trust Red China? There things always break. How safe can they be?
This is not the first reactor to be cooled without water. The US built the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) at Hanford beginning in the mid 70’s. It was cooled by liquid sodium and and tested to perform if the pumping system quit. It was shown the the liquid sodium provided enough creep through the system to maintain cooling until reactor shutdown.
Operation of the facility also produced medical isotopes to use to fight cancers and there was hope that that mission alone would justify continued operations beyond that a purely scientific reactor research project. Alas, the sky is falling anti nuke crowd won out and the Clinton administration shut the plant down.
In the USA, the environmentalists have succeeded in demonizing all forms of nuclear energy research.
India is interested because there are significant amounts of Thorium in India.
We tried liquid metal cooled(no water) reactors back when USS Seawolf went to sea? It was a disaster, due to corrosion, IIRC. And the fact that if there was a leak or doing any kind of maintenance, the solvents that needed to be used, and danger of fire or explosions were real problems.
Bingo. They would probably build it in the valley near the Three Gorges dam, with sub-par materials.
Hahahahahahaha
A reactor that we invented at Oak Ridge, made all the information public and then destroyed.
We have huge reserves of it here in the USA. As a matter of fact, I think it is readily available in a lot of countries.
We don’t really know how much is available worldwide, but it is certainly more than we know, because...we haven’t really been looking for it the way we look for oil.
The harder we look, the more we will find...:)
I am all in on Thorium, though. I am puzzled as to why (except for the bad word “radioactivity”) it has not been pursued.
I guess that word is enough for a lot of people.
We did - fifty years ago.
But it wasn’t useful for producing atomic weapons, so it was discontinued.
IIRC, the USS Seawolf used electromagnetic pumps to move the liquid sodium. Very whizzy for late 1950’s technology...
And the scary part about that is liquid sodium does not react well with water. But fortunately the system is pressurized and there are no leaks
LOL, and they put it on a submarine!
I think the major problem was when they had to do maintenance, the solvent that they had to use on the liquid sodium was EXTREMELY nasty.
But hey...they probably had some poor squids doing it!
I believe we tested one or more in the 1960's but the research was shut down by the government, so they could play favorites.
China is leading the pack on these reactors at the moment.
China copied this technology from notes & data about the Oak Ridge Tennessee reactor from the 1950’s.
The NRC Czar killed that project and all the documentation was stored in a closet at an Oak Ridge Elementary school.
It was located by Kirk Sorensen, digitized and put on-line. The US is enraptured by solar & wind and ignored it, for the most part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
The Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor: Why Didn’t This Happen (and why is now the right time?)
Meanwhile, China put 700 TEAMS of engineers working on that information.
Man, I sure miss back when Bloom County was funny...
“10,000 years from now we will still have to wear masks to visit Chernobyl. “
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DWnjcSo9J0
Chernobyl - What It’s Like Today
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