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> and transfer the liquid sodium that will be used to cool the nuclear reactor.

Wow, never would have considered using literal lava as a cooling fluid, but I guess its all relative to what you want to cool.



Sodium melts 98°C, a bit less than the boiling point of water. For comparison, pressurized water reactors use water in a temperature range between 275°C and 315°C. The higher the temperature, the higher the thermal efficiency of the electricity generator. Because the critical point of water is 374°C, no pressurized water reactor can get beyond this temperature, and in fact they all stay well below it. This limits the efficiency to about 33%.

Sodium stays in liquid form all the way to 883°C. They will not run the reactor that hot, for various reasons, but they can run it at more than 500°C. Still, well below lava levels.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor#Adv...


liquid sodium is worse than that. it will suck the water out of concrete and react violently.


Makes me wonder how fast it will wear out its container.


There are numerous alloys that work perfectly fine for containing liquid sodium.




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