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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
Ikuji Takagi, Seiichi Watanabe, Shinichi Nagaoka, Kunio Higashi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 897-901
Material Interaction and Permeation | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22714
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Hydrogen trapping in molybdenum was studied by use of an in-situ observation technique of deuterium depth profiling. A sample sheet was exposed to a deuterium plasma and deuterium permeation through it was monitored. The plasma-facing side was bombarded with 3He ions and deuterium depth profiles were observed by a nuclear reaction analysis under the plasma exposure. The result showed that traps, probably vacancies associated with radiation damages, were produced by the ion bombardment. From consideration of an equilibrium between trapped and dissolved deuterium, the equilibrium constant was estimated from the experimental data and the trapping energy of 1.1 eV was obtained. The production rate of the traps was found to be 0.007 from evolution of the concentration of trapped deuterium with the number of atomic displacements.
