3 ms·
Helium-cooled reactors leak helium So what? Helium can't be activated (Longest lived isotope has a half life of 806 milliseconds) and it's not extremely expens
by sbierwagen 10y ago
Helium-cooled reactors leak helium
So what? Helium can't be activated (Longest lived isotope has a half life of 806 milliseconds) and it's not extremely expensive. (yet)
Most of the problems with Fort St. Vrain, the US's only helium-cooled reactor, were due to moisture infiltration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_St._Vrain_Generating_Station#Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_St._Vrain_Generating_Stat...
- dredmorbius 10y agoLeaking helium, without replacement, suggests a loss-of-coolent situation. How's your design work without coolent? Or when something other than helium becomes coolent? Or ... ? It's that "... ?" question that's the crucial one. The unknown unknowns.
- sbierwagen 10y agoAll heat engines lose coolant, no seal is perfect. Even if your primary coolant loop is perfect, you still have to evaporate a heck of a lot of water in the secondary loop just to get rid of the heat. This pdf[1] quotes 600-800 US gallons per MWh. Even shut down the core is producing megawatts of heat. If an operating helium-cooled reactor loses all its coolant, you're going to have a bad day, but the same thing can be said about a water-cooled reactor. 1: http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nuclear_power/fact-sheet-water-use.pdf http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/docu...