In reply to Horace Heffner's message of Fri, 22 Oct 2004 03:50:24 -0800: Hi Horace, [snip] >If the bottom of the inside of a nuclear reactor containment building were >a mesh of boron carbide, or possibly even just a bunch of boron carbide >balls, then a hot glob melting out of the reactor core would flow down into >narrow channels between what are effectively control rods and automatically >go sub-critical. A passive cure to the China Syndrome?
I had a similar idea a while back. I suggested suspending the fuel rods in a reactor with a plug of metal that has a very specific melting point, set to be several hundred degrees above the normal operating temperature of the reactor, but well below the danger point for the containment. Then if the whole thing got too hot, the plugs would melt, and the rods would fall into holes in a boron containing solid below the reactor. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk All SPAM goes in the trash unread.
