Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
NaK was used as the coolant in the first breeder reactor prototype, the Experimental Breeder Reactor-1, in 1951. Sodium and NaK do, however, ignite spontaneously on contact with air and react violently with water, producing hydrogen gas. This was the case at the Monju Nuclear Power Plant in a 1995 accident and fire. Sodium is also the coolant ...
Use of NaK overcomes this. The Dounreay Fast Reactor is an example. The first nuclear reactor in space, [10] [11] the United States' experimental SNAP-10A satellite, used NaK as coolant. The NaK was circulated through the core and thermoelectric converters by a liquid metal direct current conduction-type pump. [12]
A nuclear reactor coolant is a coolant in a nuclear reactor used to remove heat from the nuclear reactor core and transfer it to electrical generators and the environment. Frequently, a chain of two coolant loops are used because the primary coolant loop takes on short-term radioactivity from the reactor.
The SNAP Experimental Reactor (SER) was the first reactor to be built by the specifications established for space satellite applications. The SER used uranium zirconium hydride as the fuel and eutectic sodium-potassium alloy as the coolant and operated at approximately 50 kW thermal. The system did not have a power conversion but used a ...
In the pool type, the primary coolant is contained in the main reactor vessel, which therefore includes the reactor core and a heat exchanger. The US EBR-2, French Phénix and others used this approach, and it is used by India's Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor and China's CFR-600. In the loop type, the heat exchangers are outside the reactor tank.
In order to extract useful power from a nuclear reactor, and (for most reactor designs) to keep it intact and functioning, a cooling system must be used. Some reactors circulate pressurized water; some use liquid metal , such as sodium , NaK , lead , or mercury ; others use gases (see advanced gas-cooled reactor ).
During 16 reactor core ejections, approximately 128 kg of NaK-78 (a fusible alloy eutectic of 22% and 78% w/w sodium and potassium, respectively) escaped from the primary coolant systems of the BES-5 reactors. The smaller droplets have already decayed/reentered, but larger droplets (up to 5.5 cm in diameter) are still in orbit.
The High Pressure Coolant Injection (HPCI) System consists of a pump or pumps that have sufficient pressure to inject coolant into the reactor vessel while it is pressurized. It is designed to monitor the level of coolant in the reactor vessel and automatically inject coolant when the level drops below a threshold.