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North American construction is back—smaller and faster—at OPG’s Darlington
“The nuclear renaissance is real here,” said Ontario Power Generation’s Subo Sinnathamby on May 8, one year to the day after OPG secured a final investment decision to build the first of four planned BWRX-300 reactors at its Darlington nuclear power plant, and shortly after the new reactor’s foundation was lifted into place. “We got our license to construct in April and our [final investment decision] in May, and we’ve been off to the races since.”
G. M. Fuller, J. R. Haines, V. D. Lee, F. W. Wiffen, Y. Gohar
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1095-1100
Blanket and First Wall Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23004
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first wall of the tokamak FED-A device was designed to satisfy two conflicting requirements. They are a low electrical resistance to give a long eddy-current decay time and a high neutron transparency to give a favorable tritium breeding ratio. The tradeoff between these conflicting requirements resulted in a copper alloy first wall that satisfied the specific goals for FED-A, i.e., a minimum eddy-current decay time of 0.5 sec and a tritium breeding ratio of at least 1.2. Aluminum alloys come close to meeting the requirements and would also probably work. Stainless steel will not work in this application because shells thin enough to satisfy temperature and stress limits are not thick enough to give a long eddy-current decay time and to avoid disruption induced melting. The baseline first wall design is a rib-stiffened, double-wall construction. The total wall thickness is 1.5 em, including a water coolant thickness of 0.5 em. The first wall is divided into twelve 30-degree sectors. Flange rings at the ends of each sector are bolted together to form the torus. Structural support is provided at the top center of each sector.