Nuclear's next generation • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear's next generation

#31

Post by sketerpot » Mon, Dec 14, 2009, 11:26 PM UTC

dmfdmf wrote: post #27

sketerpot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of TMI, the steam formation did slow down the reaction -- just not enough to prevent damage to the fuel rods. Of course, the reactor's pressure vessel acted as a passive heat sink once the fuel melted and easily prevented the fuel from escaping, but it was still costly and scary, and the response of the operators at the time can only be called a ridiculous clusterfuck. This sort of thing is why I really l…

>the response of the operators at the time can only be called a ridiculous clusterfuck. This is unfair to the operators. The accident revealed some reactor and control room design flaws plus some equipment out of service that left the operators in the dark re what state the reactor was in during the accident. They knew the info they were getting was bad and took heroic steps to get better data, including sending men…

Thank you for clarifying my terse statement; I can see how it could be taken as knocking the operators, which was not what I meant at all. Of course, the operators weren't a bunch of dimwits -- they had seriously flawed information about what was going on in the reactor, and the error-reporting system wasn't designed to cope with the kind of cascading failure that they saw. I wasn't criticizing the operators, but rather their actions, and that wasn't their fault.

(I can't even conceive of a reactor operator who would just start randomly fiddling with valves. That's just so far removed from everything I know about them, it would be like a horse reciting Shakespeare.)

Re: Nuclear's next generation

#32

Post by elblanco » Wed, Dec 16, 2009, 5:23 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #9

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #4

I like the sodium fast reactor: low pressure, moderate temperature, sodium is dirt cheap, high burn-up of non-uranium/plutonium products ("waste"), and plutonium need never be separated from other reaction products. The article doesn't say, but because molten salt reactors use liquid fuel, they release the radioactive xenon gas produced by uranium fission. (In fact this is sold as a benefit, since xenon absorbs neutr…

> Xenon is a noble gas and therefore volatile This must be some definition of "volatile" I'm not familiar with.

Well, if had said "nonvolatile" it would have been boring.

Re: Nuclear's next generation

#33

Post by elblanco » Wed, Dec 16, 2009, 5:24 AM UTC

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #28

sp332 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xenon is a noble gas and therefore volatile This must be some definition of "volatile" I'm not familiar with.

Evaporating easily. Xenon boils at -108 deg. C. Given the chance, it would tend to rapidly escape from liquid fuel at reactor temperatures.

We're probably both thinking of "prone to explode" vs. "prone to evaporate".