[LMB] Nuclear Reactor Design

[Mandos Mitchinson]

> Some years back (2-3-5?) I remember a front page of the 
> NYTimes Tuesday Science section about new reactor design.  
> One of which was truly fail-safe in that if everyone running 
> it just flat out disappeared, the reactor would quiesce. Not 
> by virtue of control logic, but inherent in the design, the 
> structure.  IIRC, it had to be forced to run hot to generate power.
> Note 1: Yes, we still don't know what to do with the waste, 
> plutonium byproducts are a horror show for aeons, and we're 
> getting very little of the available energy out Note 2: Now 
> the peak oil has come and gone, the nuclear power apologists 
> are agitating for new plants...with the same old unstable designs.

The new design are thorium based. There is quite a lot opf info about them
around, but a site with a few basic details is...

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/07/68045

Mandos
/s