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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
Weiping Deng, Tao Wan, Yongqin Ju, Weifeng Yang, Xueying Zhang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 7 | July 2025 | Pages 1201-1212
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2411168
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The CiADS (China initiative Accelerator Driven System) project plans to build a 250-kW experimental target before construction of the 2.5-MW spallation target. In this paper, the effect of proton beam distribution on the performance of the 250-kW target is studied. Hence, a hollow beam distribution, formed by a Gaussian beam scanning around the center of the beam window, is proposed. Then, combined with the orthogonal test method and the CRITIC (Criteria Importance through Intercriteria Correlation) method, four key geometric parameters of the target flow channel are analyzed to simultaneously achieve optimization of the target performance from the viewpoints of both the maximum temperature and velocity under steady-state condition. Finally, transient analysis of the initiation of the Gaussian beam scanning is conducted; the calculation time was 15s. The results show that the temperature on the window rose gradually until reaching its maximum value corresponding to the steady-state analysis. Detailed analyses showed that the optimized target design is capable of meeting the thermal-hydraulic and mechanical requirements.
