- "That's possible with distilled water as the working fluid"
Distilled water is pretty corrosive at high temperatures, isn't it? I'm no engineer but I've read that the water-chemistry management of nuclear reactors is a highly finicky topic.
Here's a crazy fact I can't get out of my head: the PWR types of reactors rely on lithium hydroxide in their nuclear water pipes, as a critical corrosion inhibitor. But the US can't make this (meaning, the isotopically enriched lithium of the correct flavor for nuclear reactors); it imports 100% of this key ingredient from foreign countries— currently, exclusively, China and Russia. Our top geopolitical adversaries could kneecap most of our nuclear power fleet, if they wanted, because of the difficult engineering minutae of "water is corrosive".
Distilled water is pretty corrosive at high temperatures, isn't it? I'm no engineer but I've read that the water-chemistry management of nuclear reactors is a highly finicky topic.
Here's a crazy fact I can't get out of my head: the PWR types of reactors rely on lithium hydroxide in their nuclear water pipes, as a critical corrosion inhibitor. But the US can't make this (meaning, the isotopically enriched lithium of the correct flavor for nuclear reactors); it imports 100% of this key ingredient from foreign countries— currently, exclusively, China and Russia. Our top geopolitical adversaries could kneecap most of our nuclear power fleet, if they wanted, because of the difficult engineering minutae of "water is corrosive".
True story. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-13-716