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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doren who wrote (1434968)	1/22/2024 3:56:41 PM
From: Qone0	3 Recommendations Recommended By bull_dozer longz maceng2 Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1572963

The problem with solar is storage. A moving electron can't be stored. It has to be converted into another form of potential energy that can be utilized when the sun is not shining. In Northern latitudes that get a lot of snow. Roof top is not practical because of snow. There will be a combination of both solar and nuclear in the future. Thorium molten salt micro reactors are completely safe. In molten salt reactors iodine and caesium – and other fission products – are ionically bound. Ionic binding is an incredibly strong chemical bonding – it’s the reason why you can safely use kitchen salt, without having to worry about poisonous chlorine gas coming out of it, even though roughly half of your kitchen salt is chlorine. In molten salt reactors, this ionic bonding makes sure that all radioactive components that provide a key radiological hazard are safely bound to the salt and are unable to travel by air. Contrary to most of today’s reactors, the molten salt reactor is not pressurised and contains no water: there is nothing that could cause an explosion. Molten salt reactors therefore also have no ‘driving mechanism’ that would be able to spread the ionically bound radioactive components. Of course, a molten salt reactor will need adequate shielding, including protection from outside impact. These aspects will have to be included in a design with appropriate protection levels. The danger of nuclear meltdown, which is generally viewed as a major concern in nuclear reactors, is simply not present in molten salt reactors because the fuel is not in a solid state. Meltdown occurs when the solid uranium fuel rods overheat to such an extent that the material melts, which can have dire consequences if the material then escapes its containment. In the MSR the fuel is expected to be in a liquid state and the structure is engineered to safely accommodate this. Yet another boundary of safety in MSR’s is established by the reactive behaviour of the salt. When the salt is cooled (because the pumps are ‘on’), the nuclear reaction intensifies. When the salt heats up (the pumps ‘off’) the nuclear reaction slows down or even stops. This ‘load following’ behaviour is a convenient operating principle, but also serves as a fool-proof safety mechanism. It means that if for whatever reason the cooling pumps fail, the reactor heats up to a calculated maximum, then simply stops. If for whatever reason the reactor heats up further, another safety mechanism gets activated. This is the so called ‘freeze plug’, also called ‘melting plug’. Both names apply to the same simple mechanism that consists of a section of salt in a drain pipe that is actively kept frozen by an electric fan. If the power fails, the fan stops, the plug melts and gravity makes the salt drain away to the safety of specially designed storage in which the decay heat is released by passive cooling. The big difference with earlier solid fuel designs here is that instead of power being needed to shut down a reactor safely, power is needed to prevent the safe shutdown of a reactor. Therefore, in case control is lost the only logical outcome is automatic shutdown. The properties described above combined can be summarized in the statement that molten salt reactors are inherently safe, meaning their safety does not depend on additional mechanisms that may require adequate handling in order to function properly. Molten salt reactors have also been described as ‘walk away safe’. This means that the reactor will shut itself down safely, even without any human intervention. Finally, because of their small footprint, molten salt reactors can be built underground. Even though this will not always be necessary, building them underground provides extra shielding from external impact.