Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’

Gemeinagent@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Honestly, I’m not a nuclear physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m not sure how they plan to emergency cool the reactor to prevent a meltdown if it’s filled with molten salt. Anything colder than molten salt going into the reactor would cause it to be clogged up by not-molten salt.

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  • yogurt@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    They put a plug in the bottom that melts if the salt gets too hot and it drains out into a tank that stops the reaction. After it cools down they can remelt it and put it back in.

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    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Is this real? Pretty cool if they can actually stop the reaction with such

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      • SwordandArt@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Yes I remember reading about this a while back. It’s one of the main reasons Thoreum rectors are so much safer.

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      • Zink@programming.dev ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        From what I’ve watched & read, it’s usually depicted as the freeze plug melts and the liquid salt flows into multiple small holding tanks below it. That way the fuel mass will be physically separated, which helps stop fission on top of any other mitigations like lining the containers with neutron absorbers, etc.

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    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      So in an emergency it can be air cooled, assuming they set up an intake for that.

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