Molten Salt and Liquid Metal Coolants for Advanced Nuclear Reactors and Thermal Energy Storage
This community investigates the thermal physics, material compatibility, and corrosion behavior of molten salts and liquid metals used as coolants and heat transfer media in advanced nuclear reactors and high-temperature energy systems.
The research focuses on the interaction between structural materials, such as stainless steels and superalloys, and coolants including lead-bismuth eutectics, liquid sodium, and molten chloride salts. Key topics include heat transfer mechanisms in fuel assemblies, the Brayton cycle for power conversion, and the prevention of metal embrittlement and corrosion under high-temperature conditions. The work also addresses the use of these fluids in thermal energy storage for industrial decarbonization and concentrated solar power, with significant attention to electrochemical processing and molecular dynamics simulations of salt properties.
The community is most prominent in research involving Bismuth, where it represents 2.1% of all tracked Bismuth papers, and Uranium, accounting for 1.5% of Uranium research. It also constitutes 0.9% of research on Lead and Fluorine.
The group comprises 26,877 papers, primarily published in Annals of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Engineering and Design, and the Journal of Nuclear Materials.
Recent work continues to examine the corrosion of advanced alloys in liquid lead-bismuth eutectics and the thermophysical properties of chloride molten salts for next-generation thermal energy storage.