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by mlyle 1519 days ago
> If you find "materials the storage vessel is made of" in the salt, do you shut it down and abandon it?

You identify the operational error in salt chemistry that has lead to losing some of the storage vessel material, and then you perform engineering analysis on the new resultant factor of safety. If necessary, next fueling cycle you shut down the reactor and perform remediation actions.

1 comments

Assume you need "remediation actions", and that would have to mean sending somebody to climb inside and weld something. Do you shut it down and abandon it, instead? Who goes in?
You seem to be desperately angling for somebody to say that the evil reactor management orders one of the workers to be sacrificed by going into the highly radioactive reactor vessel. Why?
Just trying to get answers to simple questions. If there aren't any good answers, that is an answer.
Ah, "Just Asking Questions", like I suspected.
I guess that is my answer.
Your answer is that these exact issues have been studied for >50 years, and had reasonable answers back then: http://moltensalt.org/references/static/downloads/pdf/ORNL-T...

Almost all largely workable decades ago before we had e.g. laser welding, modern remote welding, industrial robots, etc. Of course things are better now. (Also, of course, we'd have to learn a lot operationally to actually do it).

Still, obviously these are procedures one would like to not have to employ, as they're likely to be very expensive and troublesome. They provided ample fuel for your concern trolling while I slept and couldn't answer, though, and then for you to "conclude" that there was no answer because the person answering in my stead didn't offer one. Yuck.