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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
Joe R. Beeler, Jr.
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 9 | Number 1 | January 1961 | Pages 35-40
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE61-A25862
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The validity of using the homogenization approximation in a lattice end-leakage calculation was studied in a series of Monte Carlo scattering order analysis experiments. A method for using the homogenization approximation in Monte Carlo end-leakage calculations is described. The analysis indicated that, even with hydrogen moderation, a treatment of all collision sequences of fifth order or less in a faithful mock-up of the lattice was required to describe the end-leakage fraction accurately. In the case of nonhydrogenous moderators it was necessary to consider longer sequences. When all collision sequences of 10th order or less were treated in a faithful mock-up of the lattice, 80% of the total end-escape fraction was accounted for in a rigorous manner and a good estimate of the end-escape spectrum was obtained down to 25 kev. Escape fraction and spectrum estimates based on numerical integration over all scattering sequences of second order or less in a faithful lattice mock-up are shown to be misleading. The two essential factors which caused the lattice and homogeneous model results to differ were the smaller mean free path and larger absorption cross section of the homogeneous model and the directional character of the mean free path and absorption cross section in the lattice. As a result, longer collision sequences are required, on the average, to produce escape in the homogeneous model than in the lattice.