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 System is applicable to the modular HTRs and its heat removal capability is sufficient. Especially, by applying the variable conductance heat pipe, possibility of a fully passive DHR system with lower heat loss during normal operation is suggested. The experiments to obtain the fundamental characteristics data of the variable conductance heat pipe were carried out and the experimental results are also shown. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.