4 ms·

I would say secrecy, not dishonesty.

PaulHoule 4y ago
That SRE proved some good safety properties of the sodium cooled reactors. Specifically the most dangerous fission products from a biological standpoint are radioactive isotopes of iodine. When there is fuel damage, the iodine reacts chemically with the sodium to form the salt sodium iodide. NaI dissolves in the sodium and forms a eutectic; it doesn't go anywhere and the I eventually decays in place At the SRE they didn't observe any radioiodine and that's the reason why. Radioisotopes are the easiest thing in the world to detect and trace: when a few pebbles got cracked here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 a very distinctive signature was found in the environment and they got busted.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  By "proved some good safety properties", you mean "proved serious hazards via numerous public fatalities"?
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    Who died?
ncmncm 4y ago
You evidently did not see the videos linked, which included clips from the films released insisting the whole thing was perfectly safe, at a time when they were burning radioactive sodium in open pits. Whole neighborhoods got cancer. The whole "too cheap to meter" line was also known to be false when they were promoting it. No US nuke has ever been built for the quoted price. Lately, they spend $billions, deliver 0 watts, and return none of the money.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  I think the first one, in the Manhattan Project, was built in 18 months and nobody was pissed at the cost by any means. In fact that's when they first started doing the whole "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" which is the whole science of doing estimates and budgets. Really the question, credited to Enrico Fermi. The real question, which he himself answered quite satisfactorily, was "based on these flying scraps of paper [and a world-class education, and being well-read and a strong physicist] how powerful was the Trinity bomb in kilotons of dynamite?" And he got it to within a factor of 2. Same goes for the Manhattan Project's counterpart, the aviation industry's development of the B-29 Superfortress, which was $6 billion compared to the Manhattan Project's $2 Billion. Wright brothers nailed a lot of estimates of the power output of their engines, weight, lift, very exact a lot of the time. And those $8 billion were considered very well spent by the Department of War. I think some went way under the quoted price, I think the squash court pile, the first man-made real nuclear reaction, was totally McGyvered (hence the squash court). But we're talking totally, it was insultingly cheap to make. And only then could they impress Einstein--from my limited visibility on the subject--and only then could the three of them write that letter to Roosevelt, and then the whole thing got started. It also was a super cheap way of finishing World War Two. Germany and Italy had to be flattened and invaded, occupied completely. Japanese were hunkering down, the were going to fight to the last cartridge, they hadn't been invaded in the Mongol Invasion. The had stood up to a lot, that's why there's all these 800 or 1200 year old companies there, no genocide. So that would have meant...just wretchedness, as if that word were better than any other, no poetry would spare anyone a second of suffering. As if burns or bullets were materially that different than irradiation, they're really not. Radiation is just really weird, poorly understood, and it's effectively totally under GOD's control. So you get some people exposed to crazy amounts of it, like the guy who took the selfie with the corium (molten uranium mixed with other parts of a nuclear core, like maybe some halfnium control rods, the cement, idk the other stuff, maybe some tungsten I think they use that), why is that guy still alive as of a few years back? Also, I believe Russians, Rosatom specifically, can stick to budgets for real. They were selling boats recently that delivered power off-ship, if they're selling them they have a budget they're sticking to.

That SRE proved some good safety properties of the sodium cooled reactors. Specifically the most dangerous fission products from a biological standpoint are radioactive isotopes of iodine. When there is fuel damage, the iodine reacts chemically with the sodium to form the salt sodium iodide. NaI dissolves in the sodium and forms a eutectic; it doesn't go anywhere and the I eventually decays in place At the SRE they didn't observe any radioiodine and that's the reason why. Radioisotopes are the easiest thing in the world to detect and trace: when a few pebbles got cracked here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 a very distinctive signature was found in the environment and they got busted.

ncmncm 4y ago
By "proved some good safety properties", you mean "proved serious hazards via numerous public fatalities"?
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Who died?

ncmncm 4y ago

You evidently did not see the videos linked, which included clips from the films released insisting the whole thing was perfectly safe, at a time when they were burning radioactive sodium in open pits. Whole neighborhoods got cancer. The whole "too cheap to meter" line was also known to be false when they were promoting it. No US nuke has ever been built for the quoted price. Lately, they spend $billions, deliver 0 watts, and return none of the money.

daniel-cussen 4y ago
I think the first one, in the Manhattan Project, was built in 18 months and nobody was pissed at the cost by any means. In fact that's when they first started doing the whole "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" which is the whole science of doing estimates and budgets. Really the question, credited to Enrico Fermi. The real question, which he himself answered quite satisfactorily, was "based on these flying scraps of paper [and a world-class education, and being well-read and a strong physicist] how powerful was the Trinity bomb in kilotons of dynamite?" And he got it to within a factor of 2. Same goes for the Manhattan Project's counterpart, the aviation industry's development of the B-29 Superfortress, which was $6 billion compared to the Manhattan Project's $2 Billion. Wright brothers nailed a lot of estimates of the power output of their engines, weight, lift, very exact a lot of the time. And those $8 billion were considered very well spent by the Department of War. I think some went way under the quoted price, I think the squash court pile, the first man-made real nuclear reaction, was totally McGyvered (hence the squash court). But we're talking totally, it was insultingly cheap to make. And only then could they impress Einstein--from my limited visibility on the subject--and only then could the three of them write that letter to Roosevelt, and then the whole thing got started. It also was a super cheap way of finishing World War Two. Germany and Italy had to be flattened and invaded, occupied completely. Japanese were hunkering down, the were going to fight to the last cartridge, they hadn't been invaded in the Mongol Invasion. The had stood up to a lot, that's why there's all these 800 or 1200 year old companies there, no genocide. So that would have meant...just wretchedness, as if that word were better than any other, no poetry would spare anyone a second of suffering. As if burns or bullets were materially that different than irradiation, they're really not. Radiation is just really weird, poorly understood, and it's effectively totally under GOD's control. So you get some people exposed to crazy amounts of it, like the guy who took the selfie with the corium (molten uranium mixed with other parts of a nuclear core, like maybe some halfnium control rods, the cement, idk the other stuff, maybe some tungsten I think they use that), why is that guy still alive as of a few years back? Also, I believe Russians, Rosatom specifically, can stick to budgets for real. They were selling boats recently that delivered power off-ship, if they're selling them they have a budget they're sticking to.