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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 ...
NaK containing 40% to 90% potassium by mass is liquid at room temperature.The eutectic mixture consists of 77% potassium and 23% sodium by mass (NaK-77), and it is a liquid from −12.6 to 785 °C (9.3 to 1,445.0 °F), and has a density of 0.866 g/cm 3 at 21 °C (70 °F) and 0.855 g/cm 3 at 100 °C (212 °F), making it less dense than water. [3]
The reactor is a sodium-cooled fast reactor, which uses liquid sodium as the coolant. [4] It uses two separate sodium loops, and these are connected to a main water-cooled loop which feeds the steam generators and turbines for producing electricity. [7] The sodium coolant is pressurized to 5.5 MPa, and is heated to over 500 °C in the reactor. [6]
On the other hand, if a reactor is designed to operate with no voids at all, a large negative void coefficient may serve as a safety system. A loss of coolant in such a reactor decreases the thermal output, but of course heat that is generated is no longer removed, so the temperature could rise (if all other safety systems simultaneously failed).
In most reactor plant designs, however, this would not limit flowrate through the core and therefore would behave like a loss-of-pressure-control-accident rather than a loss-of-coolant accident. Failure of either the spray nozzles (failing open would inhibit raising pressure as the relatively cool spray collapses the pressurizer vessel bubble ...
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 Experimental Breeder Reactor II. Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) was a sodium-cooled fast reactor designed, built and operated by Argonne National Laboratory at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho. It was shut down in 1994. Custody of the reactor was transferred to Idaho National Laboratory after its founding in 2005.
The effects of a nuclear meltdown depend on the safety features designed into a reactor. A modern reactor is designed both to make a meltdown unlikely, and to contain one should it occur. In a modern reactor, a nuclear meltdown, whether partial or total, should be contained inside the reactor's containment structure.