Super heat resistant ceramic insulated wire

Although the fast breeder reactor (FBR) was developed by many countries as the economical nuclear reactor, many countries have stopped developing FBR, except France and Japan, for economic reasons. Nuclear power is important for Japan as a source of energy, therefore Japan will continue to investigate nuclear energy such as the thermonuclear fusion reactor and FBR. This experiment will require high performance ceramic insulated wire which has the features to maintain resistivity against high level neutron ray and stability at high temperature above 500/spl deg/C. In order to deal with this requirement, the authors have developed conductors with copper as the core conductor, nickel or titanium as the outer diffusion prevention layer, and high melting point metal, e.g., niobium, tantalum, as the internal diffusion prevention layer between core conductor and outer diffusion prevention layer. As a result, these conductors show good response to the requirement. This paper describes the fundamental concept for ceramic insulated wire to show the stability high temperature above 500/spl deg/C, furthermore, and introduces new knowledge obtained from this study.