Energy From Thorium Discussion Forum

No matter how much money is spent (wasted) on ITER something useful will come out of it but it may not be fusion. Whenever engineering tries to solve a problem and succeeds, the solution can be reapplied in innovative ways to a problem or set of problems that are not yet even imagined.

No advance in technology should be considered as a rival, each advance helps all. A rising tide raises all boats.

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The old Zenith slogan: The quality goes in before the name goes on.

One does not have to be close fitting to be much much smaller than LWR containment structures.

I disagree.
LWR containment structures are not very big.
In fact, the media often print photos of huge cooling towers, thinking that is the reactor building, because the RB itself is relatively puny.
I make this point with graphic illustrations in one of my slide presentations.
Recall also that the point was made by the engineering community, post-9/11, to illustrate the small size of the potential target.

I could perhaps agree that the building housing a commercial MSR need not be as high as the RB of an LWR, because there are no high steam generators.
But you would still likely need a main bridge crane, with plenty of clearance for the largest components, and/or for moving big pieces of shielding around, and possibly taking the hot cell apart (in which case the crane would be above the hot cell, but with enough trolly travel to reach every equipment location.....