Bye, Bye, China Syndrome

The most terrifying vision of nuclear power from the ‘70’s was the image of the self-melting radioactive lava from a former reactor core eating its way to China. People seemed to understand it intuitively no matter how over-represented the risk.

The new reactors make that scenario obsolete with a solution that’s “as dumb as a brick” - hire a bunch of boilermakers to lay down a brick patio under the reactor vessel. Of course, one has to use high temperature alumina brick and lay it about 1.5 meters (~5 feet) thick and wide enough to act as a “cookie sheet.” There will be minor specification changes necessary but nothing that the refractory industry can’t handle easily. Alumina brick is already used for lining glass furnances and slag pits.

Yet, I’ve have NEVER heard or read of the nuclear industry mentioning this in public. We engineers know about it but the ramifications of this feature on the public debate haven’t yet been communicated to the world. In my marketing classes at B-school, I was taught to never confuse a feature and a benefit (unintentionally, that is.) Nobody CARES about our firebrick patio, especially if we insist on calling them "passive corium barriers." But tell them that there can never be a China Syndrome in the new designs, that the China Syndrome is obsolete, and you’ve communicated a real benefit.

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