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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.”
C. E. Kessel, F. M. Poli
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 1 | January 2015 | Pages 220-239
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-793
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The conservative physics and conservative technology tokamak power plant ARIES-ACT2 has a major radius of 9.75 m at an aspect ratio of 4.0 and has strong shaping with elongation of 2.2 and triangularity of 0.63. The plasma current is 14 MA, and the toroidal field at the plasma major radius is 8.75 T, making the maximum field at the toroidal field coil 16 T. The no-wall βN reaches ∼2.4, limited by n = 1 external kink mode, and can be extended to 3.2 with a stabilizing shell behind the ring structure shield. The bootstrap current fraction is 77% with a q95 of 8.0, requiring ∼4.0 MA of external current drive. This current is supplied with 30 MW of ion cyclotron radio frequency/fast wave and 80 MW of negative ion neutral beams. Up to 1.0 MA can be driven with lower hybrid (LH) with no wall, and 1.5 or more MA can be driven with a stabilizing shell. Electron cyclotron was examined and is most effective for safety factor control over ρ ∼0.2 to 0.6 with 20 MW. The pedestal density is ∼0.65 × 1020/m3, and the temperature is ∼9.0 keV. The H98 factor is 1.25, n/nGr = 1.3, and the net power to LH threshold power is 1.3 to 1.4 in the flattop. Because of the high toroidal field and high central temperature, the cyclotron radiation loss was found to be high depending on the first-wall reflectivity.