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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
Codey Olson, Jesse Snow, Meng-Jen (Vince) Wang, Glenn Sjoden, Edward Cazalas
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 9 | September 2023 | Pages 1241-1251
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2203291
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Here we perform the matching of neutron counts in two detector gasses through capture reactions and radiation transport–optimized moderating materials. One of our detectors uses helium-3 (3He) gas and has been widely used as a neutron detection material in proportional detector tube designs. This study examines boron trifluoride (BF3) as a potential gas for neutron detection in place of 3He based on a previously studied “spectrally matched” design derived from deterministic adjoint analyses that closely mimic the spectral response of 3He. The integrated spectral response of each tube, i.e., the count rate, is calculated and measured at various distances from an isotropic neutron source where similar “total sources” are achieved in either detection system. Our results show the integrated spectral response of a dual BF3 tube detector was within 10% of a single 3He tube when exposed to a similar source. GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations were used to calculate the total source for each detector and showed count rates within 5% of those produced by MCNP, providing a strong confidence in its behavior in the thermal energy regime. We provide results in this study to partially validate the replacement based on the spectrally matched design, which will lead to further validation through the utilization of multiple neutron spectra via simulated and experimental studies.