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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.
Robert Buckingham, Lloyd Brown, Ben Russ, Patrick Lovera, Philippe Carles, Jean-Marc Borgard, Pascal Yvon
Nuclear Technology | Volume 178 | Number 1 | April 2012 | Pages 119-124
Technical Paper | Safety and Technology of Nuclear Hydrogen Production, Control, and Management / Nuclear Hydrogen Production | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13552
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The performance of hydrogen production via thermochemical cycles is typically evaluated using thermal efficiency. In this study, the sulfur-iodine cycle with heat supplied by a high-temperature reactor (HTR) is analyzed. Two cases are examined: one flow sheet designed by General Atomics in the United States, the other by Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives in France. In each case, HTR helium inlet and outlet temperatures are specified. Differences in these temperature specifications lead to process variations between the flow sheets and in how the hydrogen processes interface with the nuclear heat source. Two principal conclusions result from the analysis. First, the thermal efficiency tends to plateau above a certain outlet helium temperature. This is a characteristic effect of the method of Öztürk et al. for sulfuric acid decomposition. Second, it is clear that it is impractical to discuss efficiencies for the hydrogen process that are independent of defined operating parameters of the HTR.