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There are reactor types like the Integral Fast Reactor that will safely shut itself down even if the cooling systems fail.

In fact, the engineers at Argonne deliberately tried to overheat the reactor by shutting off its pumps and they failed.



But they don’t lose the liquid coolant - which seems like a pretty reasonable scenario.


Especially considering the IFR (and it's predecessor EBR II where the experiment the parent refers to was done) are pool type reactors, meaning the reactor sits in a big pool filled with the primary coolant, there are no pipes where the primary coolant leaves the tank.




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