when they blow, they blow and their usefulness is done
and they will take a few hundred million with them.

My guess is he will when hell freezes over and that's when I'll send him my campaign contributions

Or you do you think there is any chance "pResident Rmoney" would be better?

Best newcuelur policy evah!

First, the only parts of a nuclear power plant that get embrittled are those parts exposed to neutrons; which means the reactor vessel and the core assemblies. However, core assemblies are replaced at each refueling, so there's no chance of embrittlement building up to levels that would be a problem.

That leaves only the reactor vessel. There is a way to fix embrittlement. It's called "annealing".

Metals are crystals - the atoms in the metal are in a specific geometric pattern depending on the metal and its phase. A simple cubic structure has atoms at the corners of a cube. Body-centered cubic is like simple cubic with the addition of an atom in the middle of the cube. Face-centered cubic is cubic but with an atom in the middle of each face.

When bombarded by neutrons, the neutron can knock an atom out of its position. That causes an irregularity in the structure, and the metal is not as ductile as before - it is stiffer and more brittle. There's a cure for that, however, The displaced atoms really want to go back to their normal positions, but don't have enough energy. So all you have to do is supply some. Simple heating to the proper temperature gives the displaced atoms enough energy to move back to their normal position. Then the metal is as good as new.

http://www.technologystudent.com/equip1/heat3.htm

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002954939090351W

http://www.google.com/patents/US5025129

http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/10/50.66

PamW

how do you anneal a reactor at the same time from keeping the entire thing from blowing up.

I'm a jeweler, so I understand annealing in terms of annealing a small piece of metal like a ring on a bench. The whole piece of jewelry has to be heated up to anneal.

It's not like welding pipes where you just heat up small spots at a time with melting low temp solder. Annealing requires the whole piece to be heated up to the point where the metal fuses. When you are talking about something large like nuclear reactors this is an enormous very serious task. Gases are required to burn to give off the heat. And the metal gives off gases too. If you heat too long, the metal will turn into a giant glob. If you don't heat up long enough annealing won't take place. Also then you need to be able to instantly cool it.

You would need some kind of contained giant version of an oven or a laser torch with a tip bigger than an SUV to anneal a nuclear reactor. What would you do, beam the laser from the moon and anneal at a far distance?

Wet annealing would be performed at a bit under 350 degrees (C), but isn't particularly effective.

Dry annealing is more effective, but also more expensive since the internal components need to be removed... but it's still under 500 degrees for about a week.

Why do you think it would blow up. We have a big piece of metal at high temperature just like in a foundry.
The vessel was made that way, and the foundry didn't blow up?

Read the cited links. The whole vessel is heated electrically; no gases are burned.

NO - you do NOT need to instantly cool it. That would be a "quench" and it's the LAST thing you want to do.
Quenching gives you "martensite", which is a strong, brittle phase of steel - and brittleness is what you want to get rid of.

NO - you want the vessel to cool SLOWLY. Air cooling will cool it slowly.

PamW

The required temperature is NOT 3000 degrees. You are trying to anneal the steel, not melt it.

As an analogy, thing of one of those little hand-held puzzles with an array of little depressions and a bunch of metal balls and the idea is to get all the balls into the depressions, one ball per depression.

The puzzle is almost solved, but there are just a few balls that are not in any of the depressions. That's like the reactor vessel with some atoms displaced so that the steel is embrittled. If you do nothing to the game, the balls are not going to find their way into a depression by themselves.

If you pick up the game and shake it; then you will disturb all the balls in depressions and they will no longer be in the depressions where you want them. That's what heating to 3000 degrees and melting is. It sets all the balls or atoms free of the lattice.

No - what you want to do is give the game a gentle shake to get those the loose balls moving without disturbing the balls that are held in the depressions. That's what you want to do with the vessel steel - you want to heat it rather gently to "activate" the displaced atoms and then cool slowly allowing those now mobile atoms to find their proper slots in the metal's crystal structure.

That's done with electric heating, and controlled decrease in the heating so that the air cooling will cool the reactor vessel slowly. Extreme heating and melting of the reactor vessel is not desired; and neither is "quenching" which is a fast cooldown.

PamW

It isn't as if this is a vast, complicated, and dangerous assemblage of components after all. An indefinite lifespan has been part of the design from the beginning, haven't you heard?