> Other pebble beds: The pebble bed technology and design has previously been used in prototype reactors in China and Germany, but not a larger-scale plant like

> Other pebble beds: The pebble bed technology and design has previously been used in prototype reactors in China and Germany, but not a larger-scale plant like Shidaowan. That's wrong, Hamm-Uentrop was a full scale commercial reactor. It did run in total for a week or so between 1985 and 1989 and was then shut down. The fundamental problem is, that the pebbles grind against each other, and being of the same material as pebbles they can grind each other down. (Now if you wonder why this wasn't discovered at the experimental reactor in Juellich, those guys just never mentioned that they lost fuel.)