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55th annual Nuclear News Buyers Guide now available
For American Nuclear Society members and Nuclear News subscribers, the 2024 Buyers Guide is now available in the ANS Digital Nuclear Library. The print version will be mailed along with the May “Capacity Factors/Nuclear Security” issue of Nuclear News magazine.
The corresponding ANS online Buyers Guide database is available year-round to all readers—updated with the latest products, services, and suppliers contact information for more than 600 nuclear-related companies.
Charles W. Forsberg, Per F. Peterson, Paul S. Pickard
Nuclear Technology | Volume 144 | Number 3 | December 2003 | Pages 289-302
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-1
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The molten-salt-cooled Advanced High-Temperature Reactor (AHTR) is a new reactor concept designed to provide very high-temperature (750 to 1000°C) heat to enable efficient low-cost thermochemical production of hydrogen (H2) or production of electricity. This paper provides an initial description and technical analysis of its key features. The proposed AHTR uses coated-particle graphite-matrix fuel similar to that used in high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs), such as the General Atomics gas turbine-modular helium reactor. However, unlike the HTGRs, the AHTR uses a molten-salt coolant and a pool configuration, similar to that of the General Electric Super Power Reactor Inherently Safe Module (S-PRISM) liquid-metal reactor. Because the boiling points for molten fluoride salts are near ~1400°C, the reactor can operate at very high temperatures and atmospheric pressure. For thermochemical H2 production, the heat is delivered at the required near-constant high temperature and low pressure. For electricity production, a multireheat helium Brayton (gas-turbine) cycle, with efficiencies >50%, is used. The low-pressure molten-salt coolant, with its high heat capacity and natural circulation heat transfer capability, creates the potential for robust safety (including fully passive decay-heat removal) and improved economics with passive safety systems that allow higher power densities and scaling to large reactor sizes [>1000 MW(electric)].