PRELIMINARY-STUDY ON THE APPLICATION OF THE HEAT-PIPE TO THE PASSIVE DECAY HEAT REMOVAL SYSTEM OF THE MODULAR HTR

To investigate the applicability of heat pipe to the decay hat removal (DHR) system of the modular HTRs, preliminary study of the Heat Pipe DHR System was performed. The results show that the Heat Pipe DHR Syst em is applicable to the modular HTRs and its heat removal capability i s sufficient. Especially, by applying the variable conductance heat pi pe, possibility of a fully passive DHR system with lower heat loss dur ing normal operation is suggested. The experiments to obtain the funda mental characteristics data of the variable conductance heat pipe were carried out and the experimental results are also shown. (C) 1997 Pub lished by Elsevier Science Ltd.