Liquid metal cooled reactor Clementine was the first liquid metal cooled nuclear reactor and used mercury coolant, thought to be the obvious choice since it is liquid at room temperature. However, because of disadvantages including high toxicity, high vapor pressure even at room temperature, low boiling point, producing noxious fumes when heated, relatively low thermal conductivity, and a high neutron cross-section, it has fallen out of favor. Sodium and NaK (a eutectic sodium-potassium alloy) do not corrode steel to any significant degree and are compatible with many nuclear fuels, allowing for a wide choice of structural materials. They do, however, ignite spontaneously on contact
Liquid hydrogen The first synthesis of the stable isomer form of liquid hydrogen, parahydrogen, was achieved by Paul Harteck and Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer in 1929. The two nuclei in a dihydrogen molecule can have two different spin states. Parahydrogen, in which the two nuclear spins are antiparallel, is more stable than orthohydrogen, in which the two are parallel. At room temperature, gaseous hydrogen is mostly in the ortho isomeric form due to thermal energy, but an ortho-enriched mixture is only metastable when liquified at low temperature. It slowly undergoes an exothermic reaction to become the para isomer, with enough energy released as