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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
Fawzy Hammad Sallam, Eman Mohamed Ibrahim, Sayed Fahmy Hassan, A. Omar
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 11 | November 2022 | Pages 1666-1680
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2072650
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The shielding characteristics of natural bentonite can be enhanced based on calcination and ball-milling processes for protection against gamma radiation. The calcination process increases the content of the oxide, which enhances the mass attenuation coefficient; however, the elimination of water and organic matter from bentonite clay structures increases the particle size, where large particle size has a negative effect on this mass attenuation coefficient. Therefore, the calcinated bentonite has been ball-milled to reduce the particle size and improve the attenuation properties of natural bentonite. Furthermore, the calcination process occurs at 700°C for 2 h because dehydration is completed above 500°C while dehydroxylation is observed at 700°C. Therefore, the shielding parameters have been determined for calcinated, ball-milled, pressed bentonite clay samples according to different gamma-ray energies (662, 1173, and 1332 keV), where the experimental setup is based on narrow beam transmission techniques with two sources (137Cs and 60Co). In addition, the particle size of bentonite clay has been characterized using X-ray diffraction patterns depending on two different methods: dynamic light scattering and Williamson-Hall size analyses. This study shows that the calcinated, ball-milled bentonite pressed at 150 bar has the highest linear and mass attenuation coefficients of μ = 0.13 cm−1 and μm = 0.082 cm2/gm, respectively. Moreover, the experimental and theoretical investigation of the mass attenuation coefficient is in good agreement.