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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
M. Nishikawa, K. Munakata, T. Takeishi, A. Baba, T. Kawagoe, S. Beloglazov, N. Nakashima, K. Hashimoto, Yokoyama, K. Okuno, Y. Morimoto, H. Moriyama, K. Kawamoto
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 1025-1029
Blanket Material and Process | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22739
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Release curve of bred tritium from various ceramic breeder materials such as Li2ZrO3, Li2TiO3, and Li4SiO4 were obtained using the out-pile temperature programmed desorption method in the Kyoto University Research Reactor. A 0.4g sample of breeder particles contained in a quartz tube was irradiated for 120s at the thermal neutron flux of about 2.8x1017n/m2s in N2 atmosphere under the temperature of 360K. Tritium release behavior was measured using an ionization chamber connected to the release tritium measurement apparatus. The sample was purged by dry N2, N2 with hydrogen of various partial pressure, or humidified N2 gas. The temperature of the sample bed was changed linearly from room temperature to 1073K with the rising rate of 5K/min.Characteristics of tritium release behavior obtained for various ceramic breeder materials under various purge gas conditions are compared in this paper.
