Ultrafine grained cemented carbides sintered by pulse current process

Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) promise to play an important role in nuclear power future due to their ability to enhance both the neutronics of reactors as well as safety physics. The target where neutrons are generated by a proton beam is one of the most important units of such a system. To achieve high thermal-hydraulic performance, different target concepts have been proposed in the past. One of the most favourable concepts is the so-called liquid-metal target. To master the operation technology of a liquid-metal target system, a pilot liquid lead-bismuth target of I MWth has been designed and fabricated at the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE) in the framework of an ISTC project. At the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) theoretical investigations are carried out on the thermal-hydraulic behaviour of the liquid lead-bismuth target. The main purpose of this investigation is to provide basic information for the target design, initially, from the viewpoint of optimizing the window cooling.