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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
P. Michelato, E. Cavaliere, C. Pagani, E. Bari, A. Bonucci
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 157 | Number 1 | September 2007 | Pages 95-109
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE07-A2715
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In recent years the research on nuclear power generation focused on an innovative subcritical reactor concept, along with previous liquid-metal-cooled critical reactors. The accelerator-driven system reactor design matches higher and intrinsic safety requirements with the reduction of actinides and long-lived fission products, encumbrances on the nuclear waste final repository. The coupling of the accelerator technology with the reactor facility faces new challenges; the first is the design of the interface between accelerator and reactor. Currently two solutions are proposed and investigated: one with a solid beam-target window interface and the other one without a beam window. Our speculations focus on the windowless approach: No physical barrier is located in the interface region, so the ultrahigh vacuum environment of the accelerator is connected with the operative conditions of the reactor through an intermediate spallation target. In this work we describe our experimental activities and the numerical tool employed to give a basic characterization of the vacuum dynamics for a windowless interface, with particular regard given to proton beamline and target interface of the Ansaldo A80-XADS reference design.