[LINK] Is it just me, or is this daft?

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

On 17/03/2011 8:24 PM, Roger Clarke wrote:
> Pardon me if this has already been discussed and I missed it.
>
> There's an important design principle that's all too frequently overlooked.
>
> The principle seems to have been overlooked in the case of the
> Japanese nuclear power plant, and that seems to have at least
> exacerbated the problem, possibly in two separate ways.
>

Have a listen/read of "Thorium: a future energy source?" on the ABC's 
Counterpoint in March last year.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2010/2852923.htm

The proposal is to use Thorium in a Fluid Fuelled Reactor.

<quote>
These fluid fuels have a tremendous liquid range, so they're going to 
stay in that form over thousands of degrees. And they have this 
fantastic safety feature. What you do is you have a little open plug at 
the bottom of the reactor and you blow some cool gas over the plug and 
there's a little frozen plug of salt in there. So what happens is if for 
some reason you lost all the power to the plant, if the power went off 
and all the operators just walked away, that little blower would shut 
down, that bottom plug of salt would thaw and then the salt would drain 
passively out of the reactor into a catch system where it would be 
passively cooled. So it's walk-away safe. It's really just a fantastic 
safety feature you can have with these liquid fuelled reactors that 
there's almost no comparison for in the solid fuelled reactors.
</quote>

-- 


Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
email:	brd at iimetro.com.au
website:	www.drbrd.com