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Nuclear Installations Safety
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
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
Braden Goddard, Aaron Totemeier
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 5 | May 2023 | Pages 696-706
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2145836
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The United States and the Russian Federation have agreed to dispose of their excess weapons-grade plutonium, with consuming the material as nuclear fuel in light water reactors for electricity generation often discussed as the best option. Lightbridge Corporation has several thermal reactor fuel designs that offer very high burnups, in the range of 21 at. % or approximately 190 900 MWd/tonne of heavy metal, which make them well suited for consuming excess weapons-grade plutonium. MCNP6.2 computer simulations were performed to quantify the mass of plutonium consumed in a Lightbridge-designed fuel rod compared to traditional mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, as well as the attractiveness of the plutonium in the used fuel for weapons purposes. The results of these simulations show that the Lightbridge plutonium disposition fuel variant consumes approximately 5.5 times more plutonium per fuel rod than MOX fuel and that the material attractiveness of the Lightbridge-used plutonium is noticeably less than that of MOX fuel.