Why are metallic fuel rods an inherent safety feature?
Metal is a good heat conductor, while oxide is a poor one. That means the interiors of the metal rods stay much cooler, which means that there is far less heat stored in an operating ALMR, which means that if there were a loss of coolant flow there would be much less heat present to raise the temperature of the fuel, which means that the consequences of a hypothetical accident would be much less severe. Why is that? Briefly, there,s a phenomenon called the “resonance Doppler effect,” which causes the reactivity to change somewhat with temperature. Because in an ALMR the temperature does not change much in a hypothetical accident, the reactor is much more stable. O.K. What else? ALMRs use liquid sodium for cooling and heat transfer, which makes the system intrinsically safer than one that uses water. That is because the molten sodium runs at atmospheric pressure, which means that there is no internal pressure to cause the type of accident that has to be carefully designed against in an
