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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
I. Cristescu, Ioana-R. Cristescu, U. Tamm, R.-D. Penzhorn, C. J. Caldwell-Nichols
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 1087-1091
Isotope Separation | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22751
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
At the Tritium Laboratory of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (TLK) an experimental facility is running which is designed for the intercomparison of several hydrophobic catalysts for use in an liquid phase catalytic exchange (LPCE) column. The catalysts under comparison are from Russia, Belgium and Romania. The intercomparison is being performed by computing the height equivalent of theoretical plates (HETP) and the mass transfer coefficients for HD transfer from gas to water using the measured values of the composition. The range of HD concentration in hydrogen as carrier gas was 1000 ppm up to 2%. The gas and liquid composition at the bottom and at the top of the column and the condensed vapour composition at the top of the column are measured by mass spectrometry and IR spectrometry.
