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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Warren H. Giedt, Jorge J. Sanchez, Thomas P. Bernat
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 4 | May 2006 | Pages 588-599
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1172
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The influence of capsule wall material and the transfer gas surrounding the capsule on the time required for beta-heating-induced redistribution of a 50-50 mole percent mixture of deuterium and tritium (DT) in a spherical capsule are investigated analytically and numerically. The derivation of an analytical solution for the redistribution time in a one-dimensional binary diffusion model, which includes the thermal resistance of the capsule, is first described. This result shows that the redistribution time for a high conductivity capsule wall is approximately doubled after 8 days of 3He formation. In contrast, with a low thermal conductivity capsule wall (e.g., polyimide), the redistribution time would increase by less than 10%The substantial effect of the capsule wall resistance suggested that the resistance to heat transfer from the capsule through the surrounding transfer gas to the hohlraum wall would also influence the redistribution process. This was investigated with a spherical model, which was based on accounting for energy transfer by diffusion with a conduction heat transfer approximation. This made it possible to solve for the continuous temperature distribution throughout the capsule and surrounding gas. As with the capsule the redistribution times depended on the relative values of the thermal resistances of the vapor in the capsule and the transfer gas. With increasing vapor thermal resistance (increased concentration of 3He) redistributions times for hydrocarbon capsules were less than the minimum one-dimensional value of 27 minutes. Further analytical and experimental investigation of the thermal interaction between the capsule and hohlraum is recommended.
