The PBMR is a new generation high temperature gas cooled reactor, making use of spherical fuel elements. The spent fuel and partially burnt fuel (called used fuel) is stored in large storage tanks. This paper presents the cooling design of the storage tanks, with special emphasis on its passive cooling ability. For corrosion protection, the tanks are cooled with a closed loop active system, however, passive cooling is seen as the ultimate cooling mode for the storage tanks. If the active cooling fails, the flow automatically bypasses the active system and passive cooling takes over. The active cooling is thus not safety-related; rather its purpose is for investment protection. It has been shown through diverse techniques that the fuel inside the tanks can be cooled passively. There are still a few aspects which need to be explored in more detail, but overall it can be said that passive cooling of the PBMR spent and used fuel in bulk storage tanks is viable.

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A water-wedge is often suspected to be the root cause for short-term overheating in fossil-fuelled boiler superheaters. However, it can be argued that evaporation of the water-wedge would cool the tube sufficiently and prevent overheating. This study aims to determine if the thermo-physical conditions occurring at low loads support this claim by studying the transient behaviour of a representative superheater segment under postulated conditions. A flow model was constructed to facilitate direct comparison with a boiler pendant superheater of a full-scale fossil-fuelled power plant. Several scenarios of water-wedges sustained by attemperation spraywater were simulated at low load operating conditions. The temperature evolution of the tube wall was tracked and, together with calculated equivalent stresses including thermal stress, was compared to the yield strength of the material. The results show that the stresses exerted over the tube wall and throughout the tube length are not sufficient to overcome the yield strength of the tube material, even for an aged tube under severe process conditions of boiler overfiring. Evaporation of the water-wedge provides sufficient cooling to the superheater tube to prevent failure. It was concluded that water-wedging alone is unlikely to be the root cause of short-term overheating at low boiler loads. Additional keywords: Short-term overheating; water-wedge; boiler superheater tube; attemperation; thermal stress, evaporation.