Reply To: Investment risk

[asymmetric_implosion]

The key question is how thick do the walls have to be to survive. Circulating liquid metal is an efficient cooling approach but Li is a pain. I’ve never worked with it myself but the couple folks that I know that work with it complain about it constantly. I believe high pressure He is the stated cooling method for electrodes because it is easy to clean up. I’ve used water as a coolant on lower power systems and water can be a challenge at times. We looked at metal heat pipe technology and it wasn’t practical for size reasons. Flowing Li might work if the pumps, etc exist. A potential downside is activation of the flowing Li by a flux of neutrons. Helium doesn’t have that problem.