Newsgroup: it.scienza.chimica
Titolo: Interessante presentazione (e video) sui reattori nucleari a sali fusi

http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com/aimhigh
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/02/aim-high-plan-for-factory-mass-produced.html
http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2009/03/safe-thorium-reactors-plentiful-safe.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8
Technical LFTR Advantages [Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor]
1. LFTR has no refueling outages, with continuous refueling and continuous
waste fission product removal.
2. It can change power output to satisfy demand, satisfying today's need for
both baseload coal or nuclear power and expensive peakload natural gas
power.
3. LFTR operates at high temperature, for 50% thermal/electrical conversion
efficiency, thus needing only half the cooling required by today's coal or
nuclear plant cooling towers.
4. It is air cooled, critical for arid regions of the Western US and many
developing countries where water is scarce.
5. LFTR has low capital costs because it does not need massive pressure
vessels or containment domes, because of its compact heat exchanger and
Brayton cycle turbine, because of intrinsic safety features, and because
cooling requirements are halved.
6. An LFTR will cost $200 million for a moderate size 100 MW unit, allowing
incremental capital outlays, affordability to developing nations, and
suitability for factory production, truck transport, and site assembly.
7. It will be factory produced, like Boeing airliners, lowering costs and
time, enabling continuous improvement.
8. It can make hydrogen to synthesize vehicle fuels from recycled waste CO2,
reducing foreign oil dependency.
9. It could convert air and water to ammonia for fertilizer, whose
production today absorbs > 1% of all the world's energy.
10. Its molten salt fuel form facilitates handling and chemical processing.
11. LFTR is intrinsically safe because overheating expands the fuel salt
past criticality, because LFTR fuel is not pressurized, and because total
loss of power or control will allow a freeze-plug to melt, gravitationally
draining all fuel salt into a dump tray, where it cools convectively.
12. 100% of LFTR's thorium fuel is burned, compared to 0.7% of uranium
burned in today's nuclear reactors.
13. LFTR is proliferation resistant, because LFTR U-233 fuel also contains
U-232 decay products that emit strong gamma radiation, hazardous to any bomb
builders who might somehow seize control of the power plant for the many
months necessary extract uranium.
14. In the LFTR, plutonium and other actinides remain in the salt until
fissioned, unlike today's solid fuel reactors, which must refuel long before
these long-lived radiotoxic elements are consumed, because of radiation and
thermal stress damage to the zirconium-encased solid fuel rods.
15. No plutonium or other fissile material is ever isolated or transported
to or from the LFTR, except for importing spent nuclear fuel waste used to
start the LFTR.

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:cVaul.6867$Cn4....@tornado.fastwebnet.it...
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E' interessante notare inoltre come - a parte 1) la quasi assenza di 
produzione di
scorie a lunga vita che vengono continuamente riciclate e consumate all'
interno del reattore e 2) il fatto di usare un combustibile praticamente
rinnovabile su scala umana - la sicurezza della tecnologia non dipenda in
nessun caso dall' intervento umano o dall' attivazione di meccanismi o
complessi sistemi ridondanti di sicurezza, ma da fenomeni "passivi" in caso
di incidente (perdite del refrigerante/combustibile) di smaltimento del
calore in eccesso, di blocco della reazione a catena, ecc...