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While Russia is putting dangerous fastbreeders on the North Pole using ancient icebreakers; the USA is already developing fusion reactors for use at navy carrie

by coretx 7y ago

While Russia is putting dangerous fastbreeders on the North Pole using ancient icebreakers; the USA is already developing fusion reactors for use at navy carriers. We all know what it looks like when a fastbreeder goes boom. But can anyone here tell us what will happen when experimental fusion reactors get blown to pieces ?

08-15 7y ago
> We all know what it looks like when a fastbreeder goes boom. In April 1986, Argonne National Lab tried to make their fast breeder "EBR-II" go boom twice by shutting off all cooling during full power operation. Nothing happened.
acidburnNSA 7y ago
Fermi-1 in Detroit and EBR-1 in Idaho were the only fast breeder reactors that had meltdowns that come to my mind. They didn't go boom at all. Though we did get a great Gil Scott-Heron song out of the former. https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpNUqNe0U5g https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpNUqNe0U5g As a pro-nuclear person, this is my favorite anti-nuclear song. The lyrics are pretty off though. The Russian nuclear ice breakers like the one that took the Olympic torch to the north pole on the relay a few years ago use light-water reactors, not fast breeders. A water-cooled reactor in the water isn't all that dangerous.
gdy 7y ago
That's an ignorant comment. Russia's using the the same kind of reactors (pressurized water reactors) as American supercarriers.
- coretx 7y ago
  Thank you for correcting me! Can you also answer my other question? What should I imagine in case a experimental fusion reactor gets blown up ?
  - gdy 7y ago
    I don't know, but I've always assumed that nothing too bad, like radioactive contamination, would happen.
    - coretx 7y ago
      Assumptions are perhaps even more dangerous than the topic at hand.