Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 day agoHonestly, 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.
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.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Is this real? Pretty cool if they can actually stop the reaction with such
SwordandArt@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yes I remember reading about this a while back. It’s one of the main reasons Thoreum rectors are so much safer.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I remember reading about this one, able to fit in a small area and be moved, but never knew if it was thorium
interestingengineering.com/…/safe-micro-nuclear-r…
Zink@programming.dev 1 day 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.
Spaceballstheusername@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s that thorium is not fissile it’s fertile so separating the thorium from the uranium core prevents more thorium from absorbing neutrons.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
So in an emergency it can be air cooled, assuming they set up an intake for that.