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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
Ichiro Yamamoto, Akira Kaba, Akira Kanagawa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 590-595
Tritium Processing | Proceedings of the Third Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion and Isotopic Applications (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 1-6, 1988) | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25198
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experiments of H2-HT isotope separation were carried out with a hot wire column of 3 cm in diameter and 1.5 m in length. Separation factors were measured with cut changed from 0.1 to 0.9, and other operational conditions; pressure, feed rate and temperature difference, fixed. First, the feed rate was altered under the constant pressure, and next, pressure was changed. Experimental results were compared with those from an axisymmetric separative analysis, based on a Newton iterative solution of a convection-diffusion equation. Pressure dependence of separation factors agreeed qualitatively with those from theory. The separative power has a maximum value at 0.12 ∼ 0.16 MPa, when the feed rate was under 100 cm3/m(at 0.1 MPa, 25°C).
