Having slipped past a Nato base on its way to a patrol mission off the US coast, K-19's nuclear reactor springs a leak.

BBC: K-19 stays afloat

If disaster strikes and a LFTR springs a leak, the spill cools to an inert lump of rock, chemically locking all the nuclear material inside.

FORBES: UK Parliament Group to Study Thorium Reactors

And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor.

NEWYORKER: Total Recall