Comment Re:Nuclear Is Quite Scary (Score 1) 453
Nonsense, the graphite in a PBMR will never melt. Some say, a leak could allow air into the reactor vessel and the graphite would burn, but even that is contested. Silicon-coated graphite definitely wouldn't.
The only thing that happened at Hamm-Uetrop was that some pebbles broke. Fuel and fission waste were still contained within the fuel particles, some clumsy handling then lead to the release of some coolant gas. I've never seen an estimate on how much activity was released with it (the helium itself is not radioactive). Nobody got hurt, but green wackos took the opportunity to kill a promising technology.
Hanford by the way isn't about nuclear power. They never produced a single kilowatt-hour, so that's a red herring anyway.
The only thing that happened at Hamm-Uetrop was that some pebbles broke. Fuel and fission waste were still contained within the fuel particles, some clumsy handling then lead to the release of some coolant gas. I've never seen an estimate on how much activity was released with it (the helium itself is not radioactive). Nobody got hurt, but green wackos took the opportunity to kill a promising technology.
Hanford by the way isn't about nuclear power. They never produced a single kilowatt-hour, so that's a red herring anyway.
