[LMB] OT: Nuclear Reactor Design

[Harimad]

> Stewart Dean wrote:
> 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.

That, in fact, is Rule #1 when designing a safe reactor.  It seems
awfully obvious, doesn't it?  Nonetheless, Chernobyl did not fit this
description.  The reactors that would have replaced the older Soviet
designs did, but these were the ones delayed by the post-Chernobyl
measures.

- Harimad


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