To test this, which became commercially operational in December 2023, Dong and his team switched off both modules of HTR-PM as they were operating at full power, then measured and tracked how the temperature of different parts of the plant went down afterwards. They found that HTR-PM naturally cooled and reached a stable temperature within 35 hours after the power was removed.

I mean if you drove the titanic through an iceberg and it was fine, I'd say you'd have a iceberg-proof ship, since you've literally proved it against an iceberg.

They proved that this power plant doesn't melt down when its cooling power supply is removed

[–] booty@hexbear.net 40 points 3 months ago

I mean if you drove the titanic through an iceberg and it was fine, I'd say you'd have a iceberg-proof ship

And you would be wrong, because the Titanic could've plowed directly into the iceberg and it wouldn't have sunk. They weren't calling it unsinkable for no reason. The circumstances that led to the Titanic sinking were very difficult to foresee, just like the circumstances which might potentially cause a meltdown in a "meltdown-proof" reactor.

I think the tech itself is great I just think this language is in poor taste

[–] CyberSyndicalist@hexbear.net 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I mean if you drove the titanic through an iceberg and it was fine, I'd say you'd have a iceberg-proof ship, since you've literally proved it against an iceberg.

If it was fine once then it'll always be fine, aka Garry Hoy's Law, never fails!

[–] HamManBad@hexbear.net 11 points 3 months ago

Could also be called the Stockton Rush law, since we're talking about the Titanic

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I'm sure the Titanic was also unsinkable for a regular breach.

Now what happens if somebody drops a bomb on the plant

[–] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 18 points 3 months ago

"What are you going to do, bomb me?" -- nuclear reactor engineer at meltdown-proof nuclear plant

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 months ago

I do kinda wonder what happens if they lose coolant.

Helium has such a low heat capacity, it has to be at a fairly high pressure (70 bar in this case) and flow really fast. It's mitigated to some extent by the low density and size of the reactor, as demonstrated by the passive flow being sufficient to cool it.

Also IIRC these fuel pebbles themselves become less reactive as they get hotter and they can get very hot before melting down

[–] Nacarbac@hexbear.net 10 points 3 months ago

Well, they do tend to be designed to be resistant to that kind of thing - and some sorta fancy bunker buster would probably disperse the fissile material anyway. Certainly a big ol' not good, but criticality depends on having enough mass in close proximity, so it's similar to how you can blow up a nuclear missile with an interceptor safely-ish.

Setting an oil facility ablaze is going to be much easier and have worse health effects in the vicinity.

[–] ThomasMuentzner@hexbear.net 13 points 3 months ago

touche´

[–] bumpusoot@hexbear.net 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

This is just foolish reasoning, everything is immune to failure until it isn't.

Basically every major accident in history (including Chernobyl) happened because of circumstances that were either not imagined or deemed so unlikely they'd never happen. Effectively calling your thing failure-proof is just stupid.