Application of liquid-metal MHD generators to the LMFBR

The feasibility of coupling two-phase liquid-metal magnetohydrodynamic generators (LMMHD) to liquid-metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBR) is examined. Important constraints on the LMFBR-LMMHD system that were not accounted for in earlier studies have been included.A LMMHD cycle coupled to a gas turbine cycle yielded an overall cycle efficiency of 35.2% which is less than the efficiency of 36.2% when the gas turbine cycle is utilized by itself. However, a LMMHD cycle coupled to a steam cycle shows a slight advantage (38.9–39.8% overall cycle efficiencies for generator efficiencies varying from 80 to 90%) over the conventional steam cycle (38.5% efficiency).