Safety Features and Other Benefits
The design takes advantage of the inherent safety characteristics of a helium-cooled, graphite-moderated core with specific design optimizations. The graphite has large thermal inertia and the helium coolant is single phase, inert, and has no reactivity effects. The core is composed of graphite, has a high heat capacity and structural stability even at high temperatures. The fuel is coated uranium-oxycarbide which permits high burn-up (approaching 200 GWd/t) and retains fission products. The high average core-exit temperature of the VHTR (1,000°C) permits emissions-free production of process heat.
Read more about this topic: Very High Temperature Reactor
Famous quotes containing the words safety, features and/or benefits:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Unfortunately, we cannot rely solely on employers seeing that it is in their self-interest to change the workplace. Since the benefits of family-friendly policies are long-term, they may not be immediately visible or quantifiable; companies tend to look for success in the bottom line. On a deeper level, we are asking those in power to change the rules by which they themselves succeeded and with which they identify.”
—Anne C. Weisberg (20th century)