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Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
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Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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
P. Schira, E. Hutter
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 608-613
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-A25201
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
20 g of uranium powder was used in a laboratory setup at temperatures between 500 and 900 °C to study the retention of 1% each of O2, N2, NH3, CO2, and CH4 either as single impurities or three-component mixtures in H2. O2, NH3, and N2 as single impurities can be retained down to residual concentrations of 1 to 20 ppm at 500 °C. This is also true of CO2, but a large volume of CH4 is produced in this case. CH4 as a single impurity is not retained effectively below 900 °C. O2 redecomposes the uranium nitrides and carbides already formed. The achievable degrees of conversion are between 10% and 100 % for the reactions and increase as the temperature is raised.
