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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.
S. Chatzidakis, A. Ikonomopoulos, S. E. Day
Nuclear Technology | Volume 177 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 119-131
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13332
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study presents numerical modeling of the SPERT-IV D-12/25 tests, a series of reactivity insertion, self-limiting, transients for a variety of coolant flow conditions. The PARET-ANL code is used to simulate the system response under these reactivity-initiated accident conditions and estimate the measured damage-indicating parameters - including the cladding temperature - using three departure from nucleate boiling (DNB) correlations, namely, those of Tong, Mirshak, and Bernath. The main objective of this sensitivity analysis is to identify, through performance measures, the DNB correlation influence on the prediction of the transient behavior. It appears that for reactivity insertions >1.20 $, the predicted transient behavior varies significantly depending on the applied DNB correlation. In addition, this study discusses the degree of conservatism introduced by each DNB correlation in the peak clad temperature estimates.