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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.
Behzad Boghrati, Ali Moussavi Zarandi, Mitra Ghergherehchi, Jong Seo Chai
Nuclear Technology | Volume 178 | Number 3 | June 2012 | Pages 324-334
Technical Paper | Radiation Measurements and General Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13597
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the main advantages of continuous scintillators is the excellent depth of interaction identification capability. We present the results of the Monte Carlo program OPTICS simulating the light response of a gamma-ray detector module comprising a continuous scintillator and an avalanche photodiode array to determine the effect of scintillator surface treatment on the ability to determine the three-dimensional position of interaction. We investigated the effect of optical coupling compounds, surface treatment, and depth of interaction on the distribution of scintillation photons reaching the photodetector pixels. We show that a black coating material without an air gap leads to improvement.