The circulating reflector material in FIG. 22 may be used to assist in the cooling of the reactor core 2204. In this configuration, the heated reflector material may be removed from the containment vessel 2218 and passed through a heat exchanger (not shown) external to the reactor 2200. In an embodiment, the same primary coolant loop that removes heat directly from the fuel via heat exchanger 2210 may also be used to remove heat from the reflector material. In an alternative embodiment, a separate and independent cooling system may be used to remove the heat from the reflector material which may use the same type of coolant as the primary coolant or a different type of coolant. In yet another embodiment, the reflector material cooling may be incorporated into an auxiliary cooling system that provides emergency cooling to the reflector material in the event of a loss of flow in the primary cooling loop.
In the embodiment shown, when the reflector material is part of a cooling loop, a benefit of the configuration illustrated in FIG. 22 is that the containment vessel is both actively cooled and protected from excessive neutron flux. Because cooled reflective material is first flowed along the interior surfaces of the containment vessel 2218 prior to flowing to locations near the reactor core 2204, the initial temperature of the cooled reflective material can be used control the temperature of the containment vessel 2218.
