Gen-IV Webinar Series: Geometry Design and Transient Simulation of a Heat Pipe MicroReactor

November 18, 2021

In recent years, microreactor concepts have attracted increasing attention in the nuclear industry due to the market demand for flexible, reliable, and sustainable power and heat on-site for industrial or federal installations or remote communities. The Microreactor AGile Non-nuclear Experimental Test-bed (MAGNET) is at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) with an initial focus on the thermal and structural performance of heat pipe-cooled microreactors. System Analysis Module (SAM) code is a multi-dimensional modern software tool provided by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL).

This webinar reviewed the designs of heat-pipe microreactors, steady-state and transient simulation of MAGNET by SAM, to explore the performance limit by heat transfer and temperature distribution.

Jun Wang, Ph.D., is an associate scientist of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wang gets his Ph.D. from Xi’an Jiaotong University. His research interests include the advanced numerical analysis of nuclear safety and reliability for various reactor designs. Wang is leading a few projects on the heat pipe microreactor, high-temperature gas cooled reactor transient analysis, and uncertainty quantification by artificial intelligence. Wang also serves on the American Nuclear Society’s thermal hydraulics committee, and on the editorial boards of the Progress in Nuclear Energy and the Annals of Energy Research journals.