Investigation of Thermophysical and Nuclear Properties of Prospective Coolants for Generation-IV Nuclear Reactors

Abstract

Recently, a group of countries has initiated an international collaboration, the Generation IV International Forum (GIF), to develop the next-generation nuclear reactors. The GIF program has narrowed the design options of nuclear reactors to the following six concepts: 1) SuperCritical-Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR); 2) Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR); 3) Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (LFR); 4) Molten Salt Reactor (MSR); 5) Gas-cooled Fast Reactor (GFR); and 6) Very-High-Temperature Reactor (VHTR); The purpose of this paper is to compare main thermophysical, corrosion, and neutronic properties of the Generation-IV reactors’ coolants within the proposed range of operation.

Nuclear Power as a Basis for Future Electricity Generation

“…Table 6 Typical ranges of thermal efficiencies (gross) of modern nuclear power plants [2,6]. (T −s diagrams of various power cycles of NPPs are shown in [11] and a comparison of various properties of nuclear-reactor coolants in [12]))…”

“…Table 2 lists the top 11 largest power plants in the world, and Table 3 lists the largest power plants in the world by energy source. Figures 5,6,8,9,11,and 12 show photos of selected power plants around the world, mainly hydro and renewable energy power plants. Figures 7 and 10 show maps of wind speed and annual average direct normal solar-resource-data distributions over the U.S.…”