New Nuclear Reactor Design: Desired Features & Goals

[mheslep]

My chemistry is a rusty but I believe corrosion is mainly due to the water's pH.

 

[Astronuc]

My chemistry is a rusty but I believe corrosion is mainly due to the water's pH.

It's actually much more complicated, and involves the influence of each cation/anion species and their relative amounts.

pH affects passivity of metal surfaces, and is more important to dissolution of metal from certain surfaces (materials), e.g., stainless steel and Ni-bearing alloys such as Inconels, and precipitation of metal oxides on the fuel or elsewhere in the system.

Soluble oxygen in water is important.

Also, in the core, another key factor is radiolysis, which compounds the chemistry, and then electrochemical potential. (Corrosion after all is electrochemical or galvanic).

Finally, the driver between corrosion of the fuel materials, primarily the cladding is the heat flux and temperature.

Of course, the above discussion refers to water reactor systems.


Liquid metal systems have their perculiar issues with respect to element dissolution which changes the surface characteristics of alloys, and then redepostion elsewhere.

Noble gas coolants are chemically inert, but CO2 has it's perculiarities depeding on the fuel system.

 

[swl]

What features do you want in a new nuclear reactor design?

I would like a plant that includes a financial insurance feature to compensate all costs related to it's worst possible failure mode. If the plant design is safe enough, then such insurance should be feasible.

Our current practice of running without insurance places a tremendous and inequitable burden on the public relative to their proximity to the plant.

 

[gmax137]

[rant]

I would like a plant that includes a financial insurance feature to compensate all costs related to it's worst possible failure mode. If the plant design is safe enough, then such insurance should be feasible.

I'm pretty sure every insurance policy on anything has a maximum payout. In other words, nothing is insured for it's 'worst possible failure mode.'

Our current practice of running without insurance places a tremendous and inequitable burden on the public relative to their proximity to the plant.

If you want to see a real burden on the public, try living downwind from a big dirt-burner. And, they don't compensate the thousands who die each year from the respiratory consequences of the normal plant operation, let alone its failure modes.

[/rant]