4 ms·
> There are even breeder reactors with passive safety and very nice safety records, waylaid only by funding and partially by geopolitics (ok, coolant is expensi
by jabl 5y ago
> There are even breeder reactors with passive safety and very nice safety records, waylaid only by funding and partially by geopolitics (ok, coolant is expensive as hell, but that's because we don't mine enough bismuth)
Reactors cooled with lead-bismuth eutectic have a somewhat nasty problem of polonium production. To the extent we'll see lead-cooled reactors I'm more hopeful about plain lead. It has a higher melting temperature yes, but it seems workable. There are a couple of promising efforts in this direction.
- p_l 5y agoThe polonium production due to short half-life of the specific isotope was found to actually increase safety, as it made detection of leaks easier (root cause was fixed and isn't present in later models) and cleanup easier as well (minute amounts of polonium that were easy to spot and cleanup). Most importantly, it undergoes alpha decay, which makes shielding easy.