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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.
Rakesh Chawla, Walter Seifritz
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | October 1985 | Pages 228-235
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33721
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The application of a symbiosis between light water reactors (LWRs) and 235U-Pu advanced pressurized water reactors (APWRs) has been found to have certain positive features as a strategy interim to the introduction of fast breeders and Pu-Udepl APWRs. On the basis of a particular model for the two-component system, it has been quantitatively shown how, as a result of the lower Pufiss inventory of the 235U-Pu APWR as well as its self-sufficiency in plutonium, the installed APWR capacity can grow faster than is the case for Pu-Udepl APWRs. The benefits, however, are to be realized at the expense of an increased absolute uranium ore consumption, since the 235U-Pu APWR does require a finite enriched-uranium feed. While, from the point of view of global energy policy, the fast breeder clearly holds the key to a nuclear generating capacity in the terawatt(electric) range, the present delays in its large-scale commercialization render it important to evaluate the pros and cons of alternative interim strategies. It is seen that such evaluations need to be made from the twin viewpoints of (a) improved uranium utilization, relative to standard L WRs, and (b) the quantities of effectively “stored” fissile plutonium.