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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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The current status of heat pipe R&D
Idaho National Laboratory under the Department of Energy–sponsored Microreactor Program recently conducted a comprehensive phenomena identification and ranking table (PIRT) exercise aimed at advancing heat pipe technology for microreactor applications.
Mark T. Robinson
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 4 | Number 3 | September 1958 | Pages 270-287
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE58-A25528
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple phenomenological theory is presented to describe the xenon poisoning of a molten fluoride fueled nuclear reactor which is sparged with a suitable inert gas. The extension of the theory to removal of other fission product species is indicated. The theory is illustrated by a parametric study. It is found that arbitrarily low levels of Xe135 can be achieved by adequate sparging of the fuel. Such sparging also frees these reactors from the trouble-some rise of the xenon poisoning during shutdowns. No reactivity transients of a serious nature are likely to result from changes in the rates of the xenon removal processes.