The Bangor University Lead Loop Erosion/Corrosion Testing (BULLET) Facility

The newly commissioned BULLET facility was part of the Advanced Modular Reactor (AMR) Phase 2 sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy and coordinated by Westinghouse Electric Company. It was also part of the Advanced Fuel Cycle Programme with NNL to develop the UK’s first academic flowing Pb facility to test AMR materials and fuels.
The facility was designed and built by Servizi di Ricerche e Sviluppo (SRS) for erosion/corrosion testing of samples in flowing or static lead at high temperatures. It has an oxygen control system and can operate up to 480 °C and up to 6 m/s speed in flowing lead and up to 600 °C in the static capsule. BULLET has an inventory of 250 litres (~2.7 tons) of pure Pb (>99.95% purity).
The aim of the BULLET Research Programme is to carry out frontier research on thermal hydraulics of lead circulation loop and erosion/corrosion effects on materials components and instrumentation. Specifically, the goals are (i) to understand and gain insights on lead flow, stagnation, solidification, flow constriction, and heat transfer, (ii) to investigate erosion/corrosion of coated and uncoated alloys (steels, HEAs) under lead environment, (iii) to generate a database for model development and validation, and (iv) to qualify and test instruments, probes, sensors, and components in a lead system.