Thermal hydraulic design of a salt-cooled highly efficient environmentally friendly reactor

[摘要] (cont.) The primary coolant is coupled to a CO₂ power cycle via heat exchangers located above the core in the same vessel. The reactor vessel is 8.5m in diameter and 15.3m tall, which achieves the goal of a vessel that can be produced off-site and transported via barge, but not by truck or train. The intermediate heat exchanger is designed with 1 cm outer diameter tubing with internal helical ribs. The tubes are arranged in a square array with a pitch to diameter ratio of 1.2. With a core exit temperature of 570[degree]C, the supercritical CO₂ power conversion system achieves, according to previous studies at MIT, a net efficiency of 45.7%. A comparison is made to other integral medium reactors (i.e those with the heat exchanger and the core in the same vessel). This reactor has the advantage of low pressure and high thermal conversion ratio compared to the IRIS water cooled reactor.

[发布机构] Massachusetts Institute of Technology