Liquid Sodium Cooling Loop Piping Material

Andronicus1717

What materials can be used for the piping in liquid sodium cooling loops (primary and secondary) and for the heat exchanger?

mgb_phys

Generally stainless steel, metals don't react with Sodium thats one of the reasons for prefering it to water.

Paulanddiw

Doesn't liqiuid sodium alloy with the metal in piping?

Astronuc

No. That is why stainless steels are selected for the in-reactor materials including the fuel cladding and structure. SS 316L is one material, and HT-9 and D9-C1 were also candidates in order to reduce swelling and growth. The Brits favored SS 321 (similar to Russian 12Cr18Ni10Ti) in the Dounreay FR.

Piping would normally be a standard piping steel with a stainless steel inner liner to keep the cost down.

The tricky part for fast reactors would be the heat exchanger between sodium and water, since water would be the working fluid in a steam Rankine cycle.

The attractive feature of a gas cooled fast reactor using a Brayton cycle is the elimination of water as a working fluid. On the other hand, a Brayton-Rankine combined cycle plant offers greater thermodynamic efficient, but at the cost of a more complicated and challenging system.