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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.
Robert P. Wichner, Roger D. Spence
Nuclear Technology | Volume 70 | Number 3 | September 1985 | Pages 376-393
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A15964
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The degree of vaporization of light water reactor core materials was estimated using a highly idealized procedure involving (a) specification of the phases that are present for both structural and fuel material, (b) estimation of the vapor pressures exerted by the individual components of each phase, and (c) assuming a degree of vaporization of each phase constituent, allowing equilibration between gaseous and condensed species within the assumed pressure vessel volume. Using this procedure, the aerosol was estimated to consist mainly of silver, indium oxide, cesium hydroxide, and cadmium for pressurized water reactors and cesium hydroxide, cesium iodide, and tellurium for boiling water reactors. If boron is included in the thermodynamic estimate, then boron will significantly alter or dominate the composition of the aerosol in the form of boron oxide and cesium borate. The structural materials make up <9% of the aerosol at 36 to 57 kg, but this figure is in good agreement with estimates from severe accident sequence analysis studies (17 kg) and from Parker (10.7 kg). The SASCHA data are used in NUREG-0772 and give much higher estimates at 295 and 250 kg.