Design of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Compressor Testing Loop

For small and medium-sized reactors and Generation IV reactors such as sodium-cooled fast reactor are recently under development actively. The supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle is considered as an attractive cycle for the above mentioned nuclear systems. This is because the supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle (S-CO2 cycle) is especially effective to reduce the volume of power generation system, which occupies 1.5∼2 times more space than the primary nuclear system in general. Comparing to traditional water-vapor cycle and helium cycle, the S-CO2 system has relatively much less volume and component size. Therefore, S-CO2 cycle can be used for many purposes such as nuclear ship propulsion where volume requirement is strict, or a small nuclear reactor when it is constructed on geographically limited area