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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.
Raymond C. Lloyd, E. Duane Clayton, Robert E. Wilson, Robert C. McBroom, Robert R. Jones
Nuclear Technology | Volume 79 | Number 1 | October 1987 | Pages 82-91
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT87-A16006
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The critical experiments reported provide data for the effect of a soluble neutron absorber (cadmium nitrate) on the criticality of high-enriched uranium nitrate solution. These data can be used in criticality control and for validation of calculational methods. The experiments were performed with cylindrical vessels of two different diameters, 241.8 and 291.6 mm. Cadmium concentrations used in the high-enriched uranium solution ranged up to ∼11 g Cd/ℓ. The vessels were reflected with water, and in some cases with water containing dissolved cadmium nitrate. The cadmium was found to be an effective neutron absorber when dissolved in the solution. The critical experiment data were analyzed by several different calculational methods, which showed the calculated keff values to increase as the cadmium concentration was increased. (The critical system calculated as supercritical.) The trend of the analysis results suggests that the neutron leakage or cadmium absorption may be underestimated for systems with a harder neutron spectrum.