Nothing new...just ask our Soviet/Russian friends. Seems this nimrod is not that concerned about what happens when liquid sodium-cooled reactors fail, particularly in proximity to good old water. He doesn’t talk much about how technologies have advanced to make such reactors safe, particularly when contrasted with the issues Fukushima is having right now (and it being a more modern water-cooled reactor).
If we’re going to build a nuclear reactor, which I think we should be doing, there are several new technologies put forth in the past 20 years or so that are worth exploring. Case in point is the pebble-bed reactor; it’s less dependent upon cooling loops and contains the fissile material in such a manner so as to minimize the chance for runaway reactions.
Fukishima is modern? I thought they didn’t even have a heat exchanger, which means water from the reactor drives the turbine directly.
Ah, but this reactor's coolant is not sodium, but lead. Much more inert.
"Case in point is the pebble-bed reactor; it’s less dependent upon cooling loops and contains the fissile material in such a manner so as to minimize the chance for runaway reactions."
The PBR has not lived up to its hype. It turns out that examination of test reactors has revealed unexpected major instability in the fuel elements (pebbles). There was serious discussion of this problem on an earlier post some months back.