Heat pipe technology issues

Recent heat pipe development work at Los Alamos National Laboratory as involved performance testing of typical space reactor heat pipe designs to power levels in excess of 19 kW/cm2 axially and 300 W/cm2 radially at temperatures in the 1400 to 15000K range. Operation at conditions in the 10 kW/cm2 range has been sustained for periods of up to 1000 hours without evidence of performance degradation. The effective length for heat transport in these heat pipes was from 1.0 to 1.5 M. Materials used were molybdenum alloys with lithium employed as the heat pipe operating fluid. Shorter, somewhat lower power density, molybdenum heat pipes have been life tested at Los Alamos for periods of greater than 25,000 hours at 17000K with lithium and 20,000 hours at 15000K with sodium. These life test demonstrations and the attendant performance limit investigations provide an experimental basis for heat pipe application in space reactor design and represent the current state-of-the-art of high temperature heat pipe technology. 9 refs., 11 figs