• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    21 year ago

    Actually we can make nuclear molten salt reactors (working small scale stuff exist for long decades). Since the medium is liquid, it has much better utilization of the fuel, there is no pressurized radioactive water reservoirs (which is the actual issue with current reactors), to stop the reaction, you drain the fuel circulation into a container and you are done, no need to supply water to prevent criticality.

    But since those molten salt reactors could not be used to create plutonium for weapons, the current reactor design was chosen during cold war era.

    They have some drawbacks, like slow startup times, but the cons it provide are incredible.

    • @schroedingershat
      link
      English
      11 year ago

      MSRs and LFRs are horribly unreliable and don’t last. There hasn’t even been a successful demo reactor and the technical issues for running one safely at full power long term don’t even have proposed half-solutions.

        • @schroedingershat
          link
          English
          0
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          You’ve now swapped from molten salt reactors to sodium cooled ones while pretending they’re the same thing.

          CFR has also never run without using U235 as its main fuel source and the chinese program isn’t even pretending to do the hard bit of a breeder which is an economically viable separation system and burning transuranics (because it’s an even thinner veneer on the usual goal of failed breeder programs than usual).

          Mind-boggling stupidity as always.