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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.
Jae-Hyuk Eoh, Hee Cheon No, Yong-Hwan Yoo, Seong-O Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 2 | February 2011 | Pages 99-114
Technical Paper | Fast Neutron Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A11541
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For the supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle of a sodium-cooled fast reactor, we carried out surface reaction tests for sodium temperatures ranging from 200 to 600°C. Based on the test results, we found that the reaction kinetics over the sodium temperature range of 300 to 550°C depends heavily on the temperature but is not sensitive to the velocity of CO2 flowing over the gas-liquid reacting interface explored in this study. Gaseous and nongaseous reaction products were sampled and analyzed quantitatively. The rates of the chemical reaction were determined by measuring the gas concentration of the CO/CO2 mixture. Then, we proposed a two-zone reaction model with a threshold temperature of 460°C. The kinetic parameters for each reaction zone were experimentally obtained.