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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.
Yasuteru Sibamoto, Yutaka Kukita, Hideo Nakamura
Nuclear Technology | Volume 139 | Number 3 | September 2002 | Pages 205-220
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3314
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The dynamic plunging behavior of a subcooled water jet into a pool of molten lead-bismuth alloy, visualized and measured using high-frame-rate neutron radiography, is described. It is shown that the interactions between water and heavy melt in this geometry differ in several aspects from those in melt injection into water investigated extensively in relation to fuel-coolant interactions. The maximum depth of jet penetration is limited by the buoyancy on and the onset of bulk boiling in the water which has collected in a "cavity." The bulk boiling starts as the subcooled water supply to the cavity becomes limited due to pinching instabilities in the upper region of the cavity. This leads to a transition to the final steady state.