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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
Kitabata, Takuya
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 356-360
Plenary | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22611
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two heavy water upgraders have been developed and operated in the Fugen Nuclear Power Station to keep the isotopic purity of the moderator around 99.7 wt% and to recover tritium from the degraded heavy water. One of the upgraders is a combined electrolysis catalyst exchange (CECE) process that consists of 90 stages of catalytic water-hydrogen isotopic separation units. This upgrader treats 10 m3/y of degraded heavy water, produces reactor grade heavy water, and lowers the tritium and heavy water in the waste to <3700 Bq/cm3 and <0.1wt%, respectively. The other one is simple electrolysis system and terminated its operation in 1999. Heavy water recycle is completed with these two upgraders in the Fugen. A filter-separation-type tritium monitor was developed. Daughter species of Rn-Tn are separated from sampled gas with hollow fiber filters made of perfluorosulfuric-acid resin before introducing to an ionization chamber. The detection limit of the monitor is 7.4E-03 Bq/cm3-air. The upgraders and monitor contributed to control airborne and liquid tritium releases from the Fugen lower than 18 TBq/y and 11 TBq/y, respectively.
