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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.
Adam Davis, Donald J. Dudziak, Man-Sung Yim, David McNelis, H. Omar Wooten
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 3 | March 2011 | Pages 270-288
Technical Paper | Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-110
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In radiation protection, photon buildup factors provide a convenient method for calculating dose and exposure response after various shielding configurations, as well as information about the behavior of radiation in these configurations. Though many situations call for multilayer shields, few databases and derived analytical formulas for photon buildup in multilayer shields exist. This research develops buildup factors and analytical fits to these data for slab-geometric, dual-layer shields composed of various materials. The photon buildup factors were calculated for monoenergetic photon sources incident on two-layer shields of various combinations of lead, polyethylene, aluminum, and stainless steel for thicknesses varying between 2 and 20 mean free paths using the Parallel Time Independent Sn (PARTISN) discrete ordinates code. The Gauss-Lobatto S100 quadrature was used with a 244-energy-group structure and coupled photon and electron cross sections. Data from PARTISN calculations were then benchmarked for representative cases using MCNP5, and fits to a new analytical formula were developed using Mathematica 6.0.