Accident analysis of heat pipe cooled space reactor

A space power with high power density, light weight, low cost and high reliability is of crucial importance to future exploration of deep space. Space reactor is an excellent candidate because of its unique characteristics of high specific power, low cost, strong environment adaptability and so on. Among all types of space reactors, heat pipe cooled space reactor, which adopts the passive heat pipe as core cooling component, is considered as one of the most promising choice and is widely studied all over the world. A transient analysis code (TAPIRS) for heat pipe cooled space reactor power system is developed. The TAPIRS based on point reactor kinetics model, lumped parameter core heat transfer model, combined heat pipe (HP) model (self-diffusion model, flat-front startup model and network model), energy conversion model of alkali metal thermal-to-electric conversion units (AMTEC). and HP radiator model. Three typical accidents, i.e., control drum failure, AMTEC failure and partial loss of the heat transfer area of radiator arc then analyzed using TAPIRS. The results show that the heat pipe cooled space reactor has excellent inherent safety characteristics.