Carbon materials in a high temperature gas-cooled reactor pebble-bed module

Publication date: April 2018Source: New Carbon Materials, Volume 33, Issue 2Author(s): Xiang-wen Zhou, Yang Yang, Jing Song, Zhen-ming Lu, Jie Zhang, Bing Liu, Ya-ping TangAbstractCompared with the long use of carbon materials in human history, the debut of carbon materials in the Chicago Pile-1 nuclear reactor took place only 70 years ago. Since then, carbon materials have played important roles in nuclear reactors, especially in high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTRs) because of their many excellent properties. As the most promising candidate for Generation IV reactors, a demonstration plant for HTRs, an HTR pebble-bed module (HTR-PM) is currently under construction in China. In the HTR-PM, carbon materials act as the core structural material, reflector, fuel matrix, moderator, and thermal and neutron shields. Because the dimensions and properties of the carbon are generally influenced by the high temperature and neutron irradiation in the HTR-PM, there are rigorous requirements for their performance. Since the precursor materials such as cokes and natural graphite, and the subsequent forming method play a critical role in determining the structure, properties and performance of the material under irradiation, a judicious selection of the raw materials and forming method is required to obtain the desired structure and properties. This paper introduces the detailed property requirements of different carbon materials in the HTR-PM and their fabrication processes. In addit...
Source: New Carbon Materials - Category: Chemistry Source Type: research