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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Nuclear Company forms partnership with University of South Carolina
The Nuclear Company, which in April opened its primary engineering and construction office in Columbia, S.C., announced a partnership with the University of South Carolina’s Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing, whereby the company will invest up to $5 million in the college over five years. USC is to match the private investment with funds from federal grants, industry partners, and other donors.
Bahman Zohuri, Stephen Lam, Charles Forsberg
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 11 | November 2020 | Pages 1642-1658
Critical Review | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1681222
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fluoride-salt-cooled high-temperature reactor and some proposed fusion reactors use clean fluoride salts as reactor coolants that have melting points above 450°C and generate tritium. Tritium diffuses through most hot metals, thus methods to capture tritium and prevent its release to the environment are required. Molten salt reactors (MSRs) use fluoride or chloride salts with high melting points where the fuel is dissolved in the coolant. MSR systems produce volatile fission products (Xe, Kr, etc.) and some produce significant tritium. We examine the use of heat exchangers with multiple heat pipes for salt-cooled fission and fusion systems that serve four functions: (1) transfer heat from primary coolant to power cycle, secondary loop, or environment; (2) provide the safety function of a secondary loop by isolating the reactor salt coolant from the high-pressure power cycle; (3) stop heat transfer if the reactor coolant approaches its freezing point to prevent blockage of the primary loop; and (4) block tritium escape to the environment with recovery of the tritium. Each of these capabilities in some form has been demonstrated in a heat pipe system, but not all the functions have been demonstrated in a single system because there has been no need for all of these capabilities in a single system. We review the status of heat pipe technology and the limits of heat pipe technology as the starting points for decisions on the development of such heat pipe systems.