Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
Pesky neutrons! (But how long is the half-life of the structure components?)
HarryT, do you know anything about liquid-metal cooled reactors? I was reading about them a few years ago. I'm still kind of skeptical of using molten metal (and a very reactive one-- sodium) as a coolant. How would we detect what was going on inside the reactor? Ultrasound?
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Yes - "Fast Breeder Reactors" as they're called. When I worked in the UK nuclear industry we had an experimental one at a place called Dounraey in the very far north of Scotland. Their prime benefit is that they can use as fuel the "burned fuel" from normal, "thermal" reactors. Unfortunately, the engineering problems of liquid sodium engineering are unbelievably horrendous, and the premise on which the reactor was built in the 1970s - that there would be a massive price in increase in uranium which would make it economically viable - never took place. There's really no economic case for building FBRs.