
Triso Particles: The Most Robust Nuclear Fuel on Earth - twsttest
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/triso-particles-most-robust-nuclear-fuel-earth
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LatteLazy
Safe up to 1800C, but Chernobyl reached 1600-2600C during meltdown!?

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korantu
It is for use in reactors cooled with gas, so there is nothing to boil up and
explode. And higher temperatures allow for smaller and more efficient
reactors.

Smaller also means cheaper.

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LatteLazy
Yeah, but high temperatures mean that if there is a problem, all these super
secure grains will burst/melt/rupture doesnt it?

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korantu
High temperatures does not mean high pressures, so there is nothing to
disperse the nuclear material outside reactor.

There wont be steam explosion (which is what Chernobyl incident boils down to)

I am not even taking into account that Chernobyl depended on engineering to
not blow up, but gas reactor produces less energy if fuel becomes hotter due
to the physics.

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LatteLazy
That's all fine, but then what's the point?

Triso is safer because we wrap the fuel, only the wrappers will melt/fracture
at the temperatures we know may occur at the exact time we need them not to
melt/fracture. So we might as well not bother right?

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korantu
The point is to be able to have way less exclusion radius, not 10 km but 500m,
as nothing will fly out of there.

Chernobyl occured because of graphite/fuel configuration went wrong. In this
fuel it just cannot go wrong as it never changes.

As for temperature being too hot, pebble reactors have a so called melt-plug,
which will melt at temperatures much lower than would be threaten the pebbles

Once the plug melts, pebbles fall down via gravity into lower part of reactor
where they are dispersed in a way that stops energy generation and they can be
cooled by natural convection.

Walkaway-safe is huge deal. You can't overheat this reactor even if you set
out to do so.

