September 2013

376 - Nuclear Reactors 47 - New Molten Salt Reactor Design

          Molten salt reactors have been explored in the past. They were originally seen as a possible power source for airplanes because they could be small enough for that application. In one type of molten salt reactor, fuel in the form of uranium tetraflouride is mixed with other chemicals and the heat generated by nuclear reactions turns the mixture molten. A graphite core serves the moderator. The molten salt circulates through a heat exchanger to create steam to power turbines.

Nuclear Reactors 46 - Concerns about China Reactor Building Boom

          Yesterday, I posted an article about the nuclear reactor building boom going on in China. They currently have twenty seven reactors operating, twenty eight under construction, fifty more reactor projects scheduled and a hundred more being planned. This is a very ambitious program and I mentioned some concerns that I had about their reactor buildingplans.

Nuclear Reactors 45 - China is Building a Lot of Reactors

             I have always been fascinated by China. Their culture stretches back thousands of years. They have an amazing record of invention that was largely unknown in the West until the Twentieth Century. They also have a record of making sudden and profound changes in their society. I recently read 1421 by Gavin Menzies in which he describes two of these shifts. Around 1420, the Chinese built and dispatched thousands of ships to explore and map the entire world.

Nuclear Accidents 19 - Whats going on at Fukushima?

           There has been a lot of news lately about the mess at Fukushima. They are still not sure exactly where the cores are. Water is being pumped underground to cool the cores that melted into the earth. We are told that hundreds of tons of contaminated groundwater from Fukushima have been flowing into the Pacific daily since the accident. Estimates are that the plume of contaminated water will reach the West Coast of the U.S. within the next year.

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