Page 17 - Demo

 Very low evaporation
 Operates at low pressure
 Low neutron cross sections
 Be breeds neutrons through (n,2n) reaction with cross section shown in Fig. 7.
 Resilient to neutron damage due to the ionic bonds
 Solidifies at 459 C
 Nobel gases (Xe, Kr, Rn etc.) formed as FP from fission can easily out-gas
 135X especially since it has a large neutron absorption cross section
 Fueling is done while operating
 Very low vapor pressure
 FLiBe is chemically stable and inert
 High thermal conductivity
 High Prandtl number of 10-20 indicates convection driven heat transfer but also that
FLiBe is not susceptible to thermal shocks
 Single-phase liquid due to its low vapor pressure
 Structural materials are known to be non-corrosive to FLiBE
 Compatible with graphite
 Frozen plug at the bottom of MSR allows for almost instantaneous drainage of liquid
salt/TU mixture. This can occur under a complete electrical failure where the electricity
for the cooling of the plug is lost
 Lithium must be enriched with 7Li to mitigate tritium production as well as large neutron
absorption cross section of 6Li. Cross section for tritium production is shown in Fig. 8.