3 ms·
> and transfer the liquid sodium that will be used to cool the nuclear reactor. Wow, never would have considered using literal lava as a cooling fluid, but I g
by doctoboggan 2y ago
> and transfer the liquid sodium that will be used to cool the nuclear reactor.
Wow, never would have considered using literal lava as a cooling fluid, but I guess its all relative to what you want to cool.
- amelius 2y agoMakes me wonder how fast it will wear out its container.
- Turing_Machine 2y agoThere are numerous alloys that work perfectly fine for containing liquid sodium.
- hwc 2y agoliquid sodium is worse than that. it will suck the water out of concrete and react violently.
- credit_guy 2y agoSodium melts 98°C, a bit less than the boiling point of water. For comparison, pressurized water reactors use water in a temperature range between 275°C and 315°C. The higher the temperature, the higher the thermal efficiency of the electricity generator. Because the critical point of water is 374°C, no pressurized water reactor can get beyond this temperature, and in fact they all stay well below it. This limits the efficiency to about 33%. Sodium stays in liquid form all the way to 883°C. They will not run the reactor that hot, for various reasons, but they can run it at more than 500°C. Still, well below lava levels. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor#Advantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor#Adv...