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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.
Steven A. Wright, Erhard A. Fischer, Peter K. Mast, Gustav Schumacher
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | October 1985 | Pages 326-340
Technical Paper | Analyse | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33730
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During an unprotected loss-of-flow accident in a liquid-metal fast breeder reactor, the mode of fuel disruption in sodium-voided channels and the subsequent fuel and clad motion are important issues that determine the further accident sequence. To study these phenomena, a series of in-pile fuel disruption experiments, FD2/4, were performed, and the fuel behavior was recorded by high-speed cinematography. Power transients typical of a heterogeneous (e.g., Clinch River Breeder Reactor) and a homogeneous (e.g., SNR-300, Federal Republic of Germany) core design were employed. In the first case, large-scale liquid swelling was observed, whereas in the second case, disruption by solid-state breakup occurred. Both observations provided direct experimental confirmation of the assumption usually made in the accident analysis, and thus removed still existing modeling uncertainties concerning the disruption behavior.