Nuclear experts urge safety review for pebble-bed reactors / Esperti nucleari sollecitano la revisione della sicurezza per i reattori a ghiaia
Nuclear experts urge safety review for pebble-bed reactors / Esperti nucleari sollecitano la revisione della sicurezza per i reattori a ghiaia Segnalato dal Dott. Giuseppe Cotellessa / Reported by Dr. Giuseppe Cotellessa The main nuclear island structures of the HTR-PM reactor at Shidao Bay. / Le principali strutture nucleari dell'isola del reattore HTR-PM a Shidao Bay. Image from Journal of Computational Multiphase Flows German and US nuclear safety specialists say that solid-fuel, high-temperature pebble-bed reactor may need additional features and an extended start-up phase. Pebble-bed reactors use a very different reactor core configuration from conventional pressurised water reactors. Instead of the fuel being packed into rods that are arranged in an array and surrounded by a liquid coolant, the fuel – which contains uranium enriched to lower degree than conventional nuclear fuel – is packed into spherical particles surrounded by layers of ceramic, and th