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Today's piece of forty-year-old engineering lunacy
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19690014329_1969014329.pdf
is a design for a heat exchanger, from the primary sodium-potassium-eutectic coolant loop of a space-based nuclear reactor to the secondary mercury coolant loop. Not quite the chemical fun of a liquid-sodium/water heat exchanger, but I think sodium and potassium both dissolve enthusiastically in mercury to produce amalgams combining the toxicity and gets-everywhere of mercury with the violent reactivity with everything of the alkali metals.
See http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/POWER/mercury/mercury.htm for more examples of the lure of boiling mercury to power-station designers; it seems to be a very appealing improvement on normal superheated steam, at least if you're not too concerned about expense, weight or neurotoxicity.
In a similar vein, http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/POWER/steamwheel/steamwheel.htm talks at length about a variety of designs for steam engines with liquid-metal pistons, dating all the way back to James Watt. You have the choice between mercury, which is not good for kittens and other living things, or bismuth/tin-based alloys, which solidify when the steam-engine is turned off, and sometimes expand enough to burst the engine.
is a design for a heat exchanger, from the primary sodium-potassium-eutectic coolant loop of a space-based nuclear reactor to the secondary mercury coolant loop. Not quite the chemical fun of a liquid-sodium/water heat exchanger, but I think sodium and potassium both dissolve enthusiastically in mercury to produce amalgams combining the toxicity and gets-everywhere of mercury with the violent reactivity with everything of the alkali metals.
See http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/POWER/mercury/mercury.htm for more examples of the lure of boiling mercury to power-station designers; it seems to be a very appealing improvement on normal superheated steam, at least if you're not too concerned about expense, weight or neurotoxicity.
In a similar vein, http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/POWER/steamwheel/steamwheel.htm talks at length about a variety of designs for steam engines with liquid-metal pistons, dating all the way back to James Watt. You have the choice between mercury, which is not good for kittens and other living things, or bismuth/tin-based alloys, which solidify when the steam-engine is turned off, and sometimes expand enough to burst the engine.
no subject
If it's primary loop leakage, multiply that worry by ten even if it's just "plain" water/steam.
What was more fun in design terms were the early "back-of-a-napkin" designs for reactors which had only one thermal stage, feeding reactor-generated steam directly into the turbines with no heat exchanger to get in the way. Very efficient for obvious reasons, but not really maintainable in the long term.