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NRC approves TerraPower construction permit
Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has approved TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Unit 1, the company’s first deployment of Natrium, its flagship sodium fast reactor.
This approval is a significant milestone on three fronts. For TerraPower, it represents another step forward in demonstrating its technology. For the Department of Energy, it reflects progress (despite delays) for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). For the NRC, it is the first approval granted to a commercial reactor in nearly a decade—and the first approval of a commercial non–light water reactor in more than 40 years.
C. M. Sommer, W. M. Stacey, B. Petrovic
Nuclear Technology | Volume 172 | Number 1 | October 2010 | Pages 48-59
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A10881
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fuel cycle analysis was performed for the SABR transmutation reactor concept, using the ERANOS fast reactor physics code. SABR is a sodium-cooled, transuranic (TRU)-Zr-fueled, subcritical fast reactor driven by a tokamak fusion neutron source. Three different four-batch reprocessing fuel cycles, in which all the TRUs from spent nuclear fuel discharged from light water reactors are fissioned to >90% (by recycling four times), was examined. The total fuel residence time in the reactor was limited in these three cycles by a radiation damage limit (100, 200, or 300 displacements per atom) to the cladding material. In the fourth cycle the fuel residence time was determined by trying to achieve 90% burnup in a once-through cycle without reprocessing.