At 9:21 AM 10/25/4, Robin van Spaandonk wrote: >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.
Pretty cool. If you posted that on vortex it might well be the origins of my thoughts on the subject. Regards, Horace Heffner
