Maximizing Temperatures of Delivered Heat from the Advanced High-Temperature Reactor
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN 37831 (United States)
- University of California, 4153 Etcheverry, Berkeley, CA 94720-1730 (United States)
- Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800, Albuquerque, NM 87185 (United States)
A new high-temperature reactor concept is being developed for hydrogen (H{sub 2}) and electricity production: the Advanced High-Temperature Reactor (AHTR). The goal is to develop a large economic reactor with passive safety systems that delivers high-temperature heat with the coolant exit temperature as high as 1000 deg. C. The high temperatures enable the production of H{sub 2} using heat and water by efficient thermochemical cycles. The safety is to be equivalent to that of a modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR). The AHTR fuel is a graphite-matrix coated-particle fuel, the type used in MHTGRs. The coolant is a molten fluoride salt with a boiling point near 1400 deg. C. Because of this low-pressure liquid coolant, the types of passive safety systems proposed for liquid-metal reactors (such as the General Electric S-PRISM) can be used. The use of a low-pressure liquid coolant, rather than high-pressure helium, may reduce the materials and engineering challenges for very high-temperature reactors. Electricity is produced using a multi-reheat helium or nitrogen Brayton cycle. A preliminary preconceptual design of a 2400 MW(t) reactor has been developed with an output of 1300 MW(e) or an equivalent amount of H{sub 2}. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21160650
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ICAPP'04: 2004 international congress on advances in nuclear power plants, Pittsburgh, PA (United States), 13-17 Jun 2004; Other Information: Country of input: France; 9 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2004 international congress on advances in nuclear power plants - ICAPP'04, 2338 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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