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First commercial pebble-bed reactor connected to grid in China (world-nuclear-news.org)
7 points by hamilyon2 on Jan 11, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


Congratulations China. I hope the rest of the world will watch and follow.

> Steam produced by the heat from the first reactor was used to power the turbine.

This is incorrect. The whole point of this reactor is that the coolant is Helium, not water. Since Helium does not absorb neutrons, it does not become radioactive while traveling through the core, so you don't need a primary circuit and a secondary one. The Helium traveling through the core is the gas spinning the turbine. Which leads to higher thermodynamic efficiency.




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