Posted on 07/28/2021 10:27:48 AM PDT by dynachrome
“where do these high energy neutrons come from?”
Amazon?
The USS Seawolf Sodium-Cooled Reactor Submarine https://ans.org/about/officers/docs/seawolf_sfr_sea_story_051712.pdf
SEAWOLF also has a history, and a unique part of that history is the sodium cooled reactor that originally powered her. The Liquid Metal Reactor (LMR) uses a molten metal for the reactor coolant and, because of very little moderation, the neutrons maintain their energy. We call those neutrons “fast.” The molten metal coolant circulates through heat exchangers to generate steam to drive a power turbine. The most common LMR coolants are sodium, sodium-potassium, and lead-bismuth. Most LMRs are “fast reactors” – “fast” because most fission occurs at energies above 100keV. The SEAWOLF core, however, used carbon to thermalize the neutrons to improve the cross sections, so it cannot be called a “fast reactor.” The use of carbon reduces the amount of uranium needed to operate.
I wonder what they are going to do about the buildup of U232 daughter products.
Probably ignore it until they have a real problem about 5 years down the road.
The biggest problem is decay products from U232 which is generated along with U233.
Ti208 and Pb207 are heavy gamma emitters and tend to build up.
This is the key reason U233 was never used for bombs.
The warhead would kill anyone doing maintenance on it.
Nonpolluting... that is, until you have to decommission the reactor and the waste. For 10,000 years.
IIRC, there weren’t very many survivors.
Salt will rain down on us over here ,LOL
“We should have built one of these, and done it years ago.”
We did at Los Alamos if I’m not mistaken many moons ago and found it to be wanting: the military that is.
Awesome! Best cartoon.
I believe that they have a prototype that might be ready to start up.
I do not believe that they can be anywhere close to being ready to start building commercial LFTR’s any time soon.
Thorium reactors can be fed what is now considered high and medium level nuclear waste. By using what is now considered waste as feedstock the worlds nuclear waste load can be utilized. I see that as a good thing, too bad China not the U.S. seems to be leading here.
Exactly. Good on China. Hate to say it, but good for them.
Survival rate probably around 60% to 70%.
Not until you get past 4,000 feet from center. Which means you have to go well past a mile to get 60% overall survival rate.
https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/med/med_chp10.html
A little update on thorium-fueled molten-salt reactors.
A thorium-fueled molten salt reactor is inherently much safer, and also cheaper to set up and run. The fuel, thorium, is both more plentiful and much safer to handle than uranium, and it is not capable of runaway “China syndrome” overheating and meltdown. And one of the more important advantages, it NEEDS a small amount of a “spent” uranium fuel rod to initiate and sustain a nuclear reaction in the molten salt solution, so eventually the stockpiles of “spent” uranium fuel rods will be used up. There is a small amount of atomic “ash” left over when thorium reactors are recharged, but its volume is both much smaller, and composed of relatively short-lived atomic isotopes, in contrast to the uranium fuel rods.
Cool. 😎
Your own reference shows a roughly 75% survival rate.
Per your assertion in Post 11, we should expect that area to be a radioactive wasteland for another 10000 years.
17 Y.O. Boy Scout Built A Nuclear Reactor In His Mom’s Backyard 20 Years Ago That Made The Neighborhood Radioactive.
Because unlike the Chinese, we have these pesky little things known as “safety protocols” and “worker safeguards”.
Life is cheap to commies. Lose a worker or 5? No problem! We’ve got plenty more where that came from. What about the dead workers families? Who cares!
CC
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