Originally Posted by MS Fowler

Great response!
Of course it does open the question of what is in your mind that you made that connection. It must be a strange place, indeed. ( Not a criticism--I still suffer from some form of attention deficient disorder--As I told my similarly affected son--its a 2-edged sword--sometimes you will lose people as you make what seem to you to be normal transitions in a conversation but others don't can't follow them., OTOH, those same sorts of leaps enable you to seem very creative.) Was that an example of what happens?

Originally Posted by cmac2012

A buddy on another site is a booster for life of the integral fast reactor (IFR) for which there is apparently no other available suitable coolant/energy transfer medium than liquid sodium. I'll admit it's an attractive solution in many ways - it could consume much of waste nuclear materials currently in haphazard storage and is allegedly meltdown-proof. The downside from what I can gather is that so far practically all of them have suffered debilitating sodium fires. What could go wrong? Liquid sodium separated from water by a thin metal membrane? Oh boy. Maybe if the sodium could heat another medium which is then transferred to the water/steam component - sort of a buffer step - might be more reliable.

Originally Posted by cmac2012

Maybe if the sodium could heat another medium which is then transferred to the water/steam component - sort of a buffer step - might be more reliable.

Originally Posted by retmil46

Yep. Navy tried a liquid sodium cooled reactor on the original USS Seawolf (attack sub) back in the late 50's. Decided it wasn't a good idea for pretty much the same reasons.

Originally Posted by MS Fowler

Plenty of cooling water available in the immediate area.

Originally Posted by spdrun

Ummm, using seawater to directly cool a reactor is probably the worst idea ever.

Originally Posted by Botnst

Is that what he wrote?