5 ms·
When your coolant can go up to over 700 °C without gassing then you might also be able to cool the reactor using convection only in emergencies, which would do
by blattimwind 8y ago
When your coolant can go up to over 700 °C without gassing then you might also be able to cool the reactor using convection only in emergencies, which would do away with the necessity of emergency coolant pumps.
On the other hand, working with a big pool of radioactive liquid that will literally explode and catch fire if it comes in contact with water and still catches fire if it comes in contact with air may also be ... challenging.
- DennisP 8y agoYou're thinking of sodium. This reactor uses salt, which is very stable, just like the salt on your kitchen table. The lack of any sort of driver for chemical explosions is one of the advantages of molten salt reactors over light water reactors, in which the water can split into oxygen and hydrogen and cause explosions (as we saw at Fukushima).
- krisoft 8y agoAre you sure that molten salt in water is safe? This guy has beautiful molten salt/water explosions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDRWQUUUCF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDRWQUUUCF0
- DennisP 8y agoThat's pretty cool but the guy's conclusion is that it's not a chemical explosion, it's just from the water turning to steam. But I'll concede that we shouldn't drop a molten salt reactor in a lake.
- blattimwind 8y agoI was indeed thinking about the NaK (sodium+potassium) alloy (which is used in some molten salt reactors, but not this one). And indeed this reactor design uses LiF (Lithiumfluoride). However, LiF-based salts have the obvious drawback of their high melting points (pure LiF 840 °C, FLiBe 460 °C).
- DennisP 8y agoI looked up NaK and only found solid-fueled fast reactors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-potassium_alloy#Coolant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-potassium_alloy#Coolant Do you have any examples of liquid-fueled reactors using NaK? Some MSR companies are working on fast reactors using chloride salts, including Moltex, Elysium, and Terrapower (in a project separate from their better-known sodium-cooled fast reactor). High temperature is a property of all MSRs I know of and does have some advantages, including better thermodynamic efficiency and usefulness for process heat.