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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.
George D. Cremeans
Nuclear Technology | Volume 87 | Number 4 | December 1989 | Pages 745-754
Technical Paper | TMI-2: Decontamination and Waste Management / Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A27667
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 and the subsequent 10-yr cleanup generated ∼8706 m3 (∼2300000 gal) of radioactively contaminated water, herein referred to as accident-generated water (AGW). Although most, if not all, of this inventory could be decontaminated to acceptable regulatory levels governing river discharge and released to the Susquehanna River, a settlement agreement with the city of Lancaster specifically prohibited the utility from doing so prior to an acceptable environmental evaluation by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. To dispose of this large water inventory, nine alternative disposal methods were evaluated. This evaluation considered each method’s technical feasibility, environmental effect, cost, and public acceptance. On the basis of these criteria, as well as political and institutional considerations, disposal of the AGW by forced evaporation and collection of the evaporated solids was selected as the most acceptable method. The selected method is designed to provide a decontamination factor of 1000 to the radioactive particulates in the AGW. The system consists of (a) a vapor recompression distillation unit to distill the AGW in a closed cycle process and collect the purified distillate for subsequent release by vaporization, (b) an auxiliary evaporatory to further concentrate the bottoms from the main evaporator, (c) a flash vaporizer unit to flash the purified distillate to the atmosphere in a controlled and monitored manner, (d) a blender/dryer to produce a dry solid from the concentrated waste, and (e) a packaging system to prepare and package the solid waste in containers acceptable for shipment and burial at a commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal site. The projected time span for AGW disposal operations is ∼2 yr, allowing for scheduled availability of the 8706-m3 (2300000-gal) inventory and planned system maintenance time. The estimated volume of waste generated, packaged, and shipped during this operation is ∼145 tonnes (∼160 t). The waste conforms to the burial requirements for class A and transportation requirements for low specific activity radioactive material.