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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
G. C. Abell, A. Attalla
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 643-648
Tritium Properties and Interactions with Material | 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-A25207
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) studies of aging phenomena in palladium tritide. 3He NMR relaxation parameters have been measured as a function of temperature for 6-, 13-, and 22-month-old beta phase palladium tritide. The most significant result of this study is the observation of a solid/fluid phase transition near 250 K of 3He that has accumulated in the PdTx substrate via triton decay. Although the existence of solid helium at relatively high temperatures had been predicted for helium in metals, it had not previously been confirmed in any metal/helium system. The observed melting temperatures, together with the known equation of state for 4He, allow a determination of the helium density as a function of age. The atomic density obtained in this way is approximately 2.0 times that of palladium metal, agreeing with densities inferred from dilatometric measurements of other metal tritides and also with predictions based on the concept of dislocation loop punching by highly overpressurized He bubbles. The 3He signal in the 22-month-old sample was sufficiently strong to allow a detailed study of melting as a function of temperature, and provides information on the distribution of densities over the ensemble of bubbles.
