Tandem Mirror Reactors are designed to operate at full power, and essentially in a steady-state mode. However, experience with electricity-generating power plants indicate that this is hardly realized due to load variations and frequent subsystem failures. In this paper, we investigate the engineering constraints and design requirements during power transients. The study considers the following areas:

  1. Analysis of the anticipated base-line load history of TMR's.
  2. Transient thermal hydraulics.
  3. System pre-heating design.
  4. Stress analysis for transient loads, using the newly developed STAIRE code, STress Analysis Including Radiation Effects.
As an example, the Mirror Advanced Reactor Study (MARS) is analyzed, and the engineering limits on power variations are identified.