Heat Pipe as a Passive Cooling System Driving New Generation of Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

The technology of the Heat Pipe (HP) system is very well known for scientists and engineers working in the field of thermal-hydraulic since its invention at Las Alamos Nation Laboratory around the 1960s time frame. It is a passive heat transfer/heat exchanger system that comes in the form of either a constant or variable system without any mechanical built-in moving part. This passive heat transfer system and its augmentation within the core of nuclear power reactors have been proposed in the past few decades. The sodium, potassium, or mercury type heat pipe system using any of these three elements for the cooling system has been considered by many manufacturers of fission reactors and recently fusion reactors particularly Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF). Integration of the heat pipes as passive cooling can be seen in a new generation of a nuclear power reactor system that is designed for unconventional application field such as a space-based vehicle for deep space or galaxy exploration, planetary surface-based power plants as well as operation in remote areas on Earth. With the new generation of Small Modular Reactor (SMR) in form of Nuclear Micro Reactors (NMR), this type of fission reactor has integrated Alkali metal heat pipes to a series of Stirling convertors or thermoelectric converters for power generation that would generate anywhere from 13kwt to 3Mwt thermal of power for the energy conversion system.