IF it’s a salt, THEN it could easily be dissolved into whatever dissolves that salt ( like, you know, water ).
Scrap gets rained on, & salts washed away, going into the waterways…
I’m not saying that is what happened, this time, but I am saying that if they’re using radioactive cesium salt, then they’re creating extra risk, that wouldn’t be the case if they were using a solid pellet of metal.
( this, obviously, applies to the spent fuel from any thorium-salt nuclear reactor, too: salts dissolve! Containment that is absolutely proof against that, for the entire required duration, … may not be possible, for some long-duration isotopes, right? )
That it isn’t an international-criminal-law offense to have such materials immediately taken to radioactive-waste-management, … is … morally-criminal.
Allowing it to just happen, when normal people aren’t competent to either recognize, or deal-with, nuclear-radiation…
Typical rejection-of-accountability & rejection-of-responsibility, though, of authority, isn’t it?
Not every salt is easily soluble in water. Salt in a chemical sense is a compound made up of multiple ions. Marble and pretty much all rocks/minerals are also salts in a chemical sense and you don’t see our mountains being washed away by one rainfall. So saying they use a thorium salt is not in itself a problem, depending on which salt they use.
I couldn’t find any definitive answer, but from what I found on Wikipedia is that they mostly use Thorium dioxide at the moment, which is practically insoluble in water and alkaline, by slightly soluble in acids.
So no, salts don’t all dissolve. It completely depends on the specific salt and its properties.
But yeah, nuclear industry in general is pretty hands off with regard to accountability and taking care of the long time effects.
I knew, when writing, that some salts are functionally insoluable ( lithium-fluoride, I’d read, pretty-much doesn’t dissolve in water ).
I’d hoped that I’d phrased it carefully-enough, but obviously didn’t.
Definitely thank you for identifying that the salt specific to thorium-salt reactors isn’t at room temperature going to be easily dissolveable into our environment…
but … I’ve also learned that hot-chemistry can be drastically different from room-temperature chemistry, & after all the … gaslighting … of various industries, through the past decades…
I want systematic & thorough testing to see what that salt can react with, under its entire temperature & pressure regime, before anybody signs-off on it.
“hands off” is a very polite way of saying it, Hoomin…
& I’d never thought of marble as a salt, you got me on that point!
IF it’s a salt, THEN it could easily be dissolved into whatever dissolves that salt ( like, you know, water ).
Scrap gets rained on, & salts washed away, going into the waterways…
I’m not saying that is what happened, this time, but I am saying that if they’re using radioactive cesium salt, then they’re creating extra risk, that wouldn’t be the case if they were using a solid pellet of metal.
( this, obviously, applies to the spent fuel from any thorium-salt nuclear reactor, too: salts dissolve! Containment that is absolutely proof against that, for the entire required duration, … may not be possible, for some long-duration isotopes, right? )
That it isn’t an international-criminal-law offense to have such materials immediately taken to radioactive-waste-management, … is … morally-criminal.
Allowing it to just happen, when normal people aren’t competent to either recognize, or deal-with, nuclear-radiation…
Typical rejection-of-accountability & rejection-of-responsibility, though, of authority, isn’t it?
Contemptible.
_ /\ _
Not every salt is easily soluble in water. Salt in a chemical sense is a compound made up of multiple ions. Marble and pretty much all rocks/minerals are also salts in a chemical sense and you don’t see our mountains being washed away by one rainfall. So saying they use a thorium salt is not in itself a problem, depending on which salt they use.
I couldn’t find any definitive answer, but from what I found on Wikipedia is that they mostly use Thorium dioxide at the moment, which is practically insoluble in water and alkaline, by slightly soluble in acids.
So no, salts don’t all dissolve. It completely depends on the specific salt and its properties.
But yeah, nuclear industry in general is pretty hands off with regard to accountability and taking care of the long time effects.
I knew, when writing, that some salts are functionally insoluable ( lithium-fluoride, I’d read, pretty-much doesn’t dissolve in water ).
I’d hoped that I’d phrased it carefully-enough, but obviously didn’t.
Definitely thank you for identifying that the salt specific to thorium-salt reactors isn’t at room temperature going to be easily dissolveable into our environment…
but … I’ve also learned that hot-chemistry can be drastically different from room-temperature chemistry, & after all the … gaslighting … of various industries, through the past decades…
I want systematic & thorough testing to see what that salt can react with, under its entire temperature & pressure regime, before anybody signs-off on it.
“hands off” is a very polite way of saying it, Hoomin…
& I’d never thought of marble as a salt, you got me on that point!
_ /\ _