[dongobongo]

This actually happened in August and September of 2023 and it’s great validation for High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) at larger scales. I hope they have the guts to also do a full loss of coolant test. I’ve also heard the these two reactors have been turned off for quite a while due to issues with the primary heat exchangers, temperature fluctuations, and uneven cooling - characteristically disadvantages of pebble beds.

There’s of course 2 flavors of HTGR (prismatic and pebble bed), and people choose the pebble version for continuous refueling despite all the drawbacks [1]. But there’s a lot of reasons to do prismatic. Can’t wait to see China’s prismatic HTGR.

[1] https://lvenneri.com/blog/pebble-bed-nukegumball