A Plant with Water Cooling

The present system is an alternative to the commonly considered He cooled plants which has some advantages, although perhaps, the main reason that its difficulties are not apparent, is that the plan is relatively new. The general nature of the estimates to be described below seem to indicate that it is worth a more detailed consideration. 

The use of the uranium in the form of cylinders rather than spheres has been proposed independently by Szilard and by Wheeler. The water cooling is one of the subjects which have been allotted for consideration to Van Vleck and one of the writers in an early meeting. The use of aluminium tubes was proposed by Creutz. The differential heating was proposed by Szilard. The present plan is rather a compilation of generally known ideas than anything else. 

The main difficulties of the plan that we can see at present are the difficulty of establishing a heat contact between the aluminium tubes and the uranium, and the possibility of a corrosion of the aluminium under the joint action of water and radiation. The present plan does not provide for a cooling of the graphite, but we believe that this can be arranged in numerous ways and will not present serious trouble. 

The form of the pile is a cylinder with a diameter of about 8 m and a height of 5.5 m. Its volume is 280 m and it requires about 65 tons of uranium, 1/8 of which is to be in the form of metal. The total amount of graphite is 440 tons. The uranium is arranged in the form of cylinders about 5.5 m long and with a diameter 3.6 cm, where it consists of the carbide. Its diameter is 3 cm where it consists of metal. The holes in the graphite have everywhere at least 3 cm 

The water enters the central tube at 10 atmospheres pressure and assumes a velocity of 15.8 m/sec. The temperature increase of the water in the central pipe is assumed to be 60 C. The heat transfer coefficient under these conditions is 

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One of the most notorious cases of industrial disaster took place in 1984 in Bhopal, India. A plant with a license from the Union Carbide company was making methyl isocyanate (MIC), CH3NCO, which is an intermediate for the manufacture of pesticides. MIC boils at 39 °C, and the vapor density is heavier than air and very toxic by inhalation and skin absorption. The maximum allowable air concentration is 0.02 ppm by volume over 8 h. MIC also reacts with water and produces heat, which must be removed to prevent boiling over. On that day in 1984, the cooling system failed during... 

A 5 MW water-cooled nuclear heating reactor (NHR-5) is being operated by INET since 1985 for demonstrating nuclear heating (in winter), cooling (in summer) and desalination. A follow-up plant, NHR-200, with 200 MW has been designed a respective construction permit has been released in 1997 [81]. 

If car traffic in the city of Munich with 500,000 vehicles per day were converted to hydrogen-fueled traffic and assuming a 20 km cruising range per day and 1 kWh/km energy consumption, water vapor emissions would amount to about 1 million t/yr or 2 kg/(m yr) in the city area. This is about 0.1 % of the mean armual precipitation. A 1000 MW water-cooled power plant emits about 14 million t/yr of water vapor assuming 7000 operation hours [4]. 

FIG. 19.2. Main components of a pressurized light water cooled and -moderated nuclear power reactor (PWR) and a view of the Ringhals plant (Sweden) with 3 PWRs and 1 BWR. 

A phenolic resin was being produced in a 5.9 m reactor by the reaction between phenol and formaldehyde using a sodium hydroxide catalyst. The vessel was fitted with a stirrer, a temperature probe, a steam heating/water cooling Jacket and cooling coils. The resin was being formulated in this reactor for the first time after pilot plant laboratory trials in a 2.27 m reactor. 

The design provides for shop fabrication of certain plant components and their easy installation at the site the performed design studies have shown that the specific (per output) constmction cost of the 4S-LMR could be maintained at a level matching that of a plant with a large water cooled reactor. 

High-pressure (0.7 -1.6 MPa) liquefaction with water cooling (Fig. 80) does not require a cooling plant. Therefore, it has the lowest energy cost of all methods however, the high construction cost must be set against this. 

It should be noted that in aU NPPs with PWRs, ABWRs, BWRs, PHWRs, and LGRs, subcritical-pressure Rankine steam turbine cycle is used. Primary steam is a saturated steam at the corresponding pressure. For the reheat, the primary saturated steam is used. Therefore, the reheat temperature is lower than the primary steam temperature. In general, the primary steam and secondary steam parameters at NPPs are significantly lower than those at thermal power plants. Due to this, thermal efficiencies of these NPPs equipped with water-cooled reactors are lower than those of NPPs equipped with AGRs and LMFBRs (sodium-cooled fast reactors, SFRs), and... 

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