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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Robert C. Cook
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 155-163
Technical Paper | Fourteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A17893
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The sound speed in a Be grain is markedly different in orthogonal directions due to an anisotropic Young’s modulus. The impact of this fact on ICF capsules machined from multi-crystalline Be is not clear, but is of concern if the shock velocity is likewise grain orientation dependent. In this paper the expected inner wall break out profile due to grain affected shock velocity variations is calculated for a Be capsule, as a function of the grain size and effective shock velocity anisotropy factor factor p = v‖ / v⊥, where v‖ and v⊥ are the effective maximum and minimum orthogonal shock speeds in a grain. In this simple model it is assumed that grain boundaries have no effect other than to mark the location where the shock speed changes as it moves from one grain to another. The grain structure of bulk beryllium is modeled by randomly placing N points in a volume V to define Wigner-Seitz cells (grains) of average volume V/N. Each grain is given a random orientation. The spherical shell wall is modeled by a 150 µm thick planar slab of this multi-crystalline material, 2πR in length where R is the capsule radius, taken to be 1000 pm. The slab is sampled at 3600 points along its 2πR length, at each point the average shock velocity through the sample is determined based on the model slab grain structure at that point. This data is used to create the expected spatial breakout profile, which is then Fourier transformed to give a power spectral representation that is compared to the current outside surface design specification. In order to match the design specification, grain diameters less than 10 pm and an effective shock velocity anisotropy, p, of less than 1.001 are necessary.