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This topic is about cooling systems for nuclear reactors of any kind.
The work reported in the opening article is about work on a cooling system that uses electric heating to simulate a reactor.
As Calliban reminds us frequently, cooling a reactor effectively and efficiently is just as important as creating thermal energy in the first place.
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Post #3: Report on work at Idaho National Laboratory on cooling systems for microreactors
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/eng … 00095.html
The article at the link above is about design and testing of a cooling system for microreactors using electric heaters to simulate a reactor.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/eng … 00095.html
The article at the link above is about design and testing of a cooling system for microreactors using electric heaters to simulate a reactor.
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The article concerns microreactors, generating around 100kW of heat. These reactors would be useful on Mars and have the benefit of a high level of passive safety, due to their small size and ability to lose heat radiatively.
But they have other problems. High neutron leakage from small cores tends to drive the need for higher enrichment. Such reactors require more fissile material per kW of power generated, which is undesirable from an economic standpoint. Finally, there is no hope of reactors this small becoming a large scale solution under present regulatory arrangements. The burden of management imposed by organisations like the NRC and ONR would make it very difficult for powerplants smaller than several hundred MW to remain in business.
Of course, the consequences of a nuclear accident scale with power output. A 1000MW reactor presumably carries 1000x the fission product inventory of a 1MW reactor. So an accident in a smaller plant will not have the same societal effects. It may be possible to simplify regulatory arrangements on the basis of this and the high level of passive safety inherent to such a plant.
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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