Rigby5
Diamond Member
- Apr 23, 2017
- 31,996
- 10,784
No salt reactor has the problem with pressurized steam ... they use sodium as a coolant ... I don't know about shutting down automatically, but the sodium doesn't flash into steam ... like water does ... that was one of the main problems with TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima ... and of course, using oxygen to cool things in moronic, Windscale was a disaster from the beginning ...
The debate was shut down in secret, and the far more dangerous uranium reactors were selected because they produced weapons grade plutonium and thorium salt reactors did not.
{...
Science writer Richard Martin states that nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg, who was director at Oak Ridge and primarily responsible for the new reactor, lost his job as director because he championed development of the safer thorium reactors.[12][13] Weinberg himself recalls this period:
Martin explains that Weinberg's unwillingness to sacrifice potentially safe nuclear power for the benefit of military uses forced him to retire:[Congressman] Chet Holifield was clearly exasperated with me, and he finally blurted out, "Alvin, if you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it may be time for you to leave nuclear energy." I was speechless. But it was apparent to me that my style, my attitude, and my perception of the future were no longer in tune with the powers within the AEC.[14]
...}Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. ... his team built a working reactor ... and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation's atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973.[15]