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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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
S. Rosanvallon, J.L. Courouau, G. Marbach, W. Gulden
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 695-699
Decontamination and Waste | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST41-695
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The waste management is a challenge for any future fusion facility including ITER. Detritiation could allow easier procedures since the practices in different countries already limit tritium contents and releases for disposal in nuclear waste storage. The experience developed in steel-making processes, for liquid steel degassing by gas injection, has been applied for modeling of tritium removal. A numerical model, initially developed at IRSID (USINOR's Process Research Center) for hydrogen removal, is adapted to determine detritiation efficiency. The hydrogen isotope transfer between liquid metal and injected gas occurs in two elementary steps, liquid phase mass transfer and interfacial reaction driven by Sievert's law for H2 and T2. In the gas phase, H2 and T2 react to give HT, according to the thermodynamic equilibrium and the isotopic exchange. The model takes into account the change in bubbles swarms (sizes and velocities) as they ascent from the bottom of the vessel to the metal free surface. It is thus possible to predict the tritium content evolution during the treatment as a function of process parameters. Duration and inlet gas mixture, which have the major influence on detritiation efficiency, must be set according to the tritium initial concentration and the activity expected in the final waste.