It would be great to get a straightforward assessment of the improvements in reactor tech in this new plant. "Passive safety features" sound pretty good to my untrained ear. But how much of this is marketing bullshytt?
AP1000 has a water tank above the reactor, and can cool itself for 72 hours without electrical power or human action. This design probably would've prevented the Fukushima meltdowns.
Ideally, reactors should be designed to transition all the way to air cooling without any help. The high temperature designs (e.g. TRISO and molten salt) should be able to do this, if we ever build them.
p1mrx|2 years ago
Ideally, reactors should be designed to transition all the way to air cooling without any help. The high temperature designs (e.g. TRISO and molten salt) should be able to do this, if we ever build them.
After Fukushima, the FLEX program was created to protect existing US reactors from a similar scenario: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...