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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.
Han Gyu Joo, Jae-Jun Jeong, Byung-Oh Cho, Won Jae Lee, Sung Quun Zee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 142 | Number 2 | May 2003 | Pages 166-179
Technical Paper | OECD/NRC MSLB Benchmark | doi.org/10.13182/NT142-166
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The refined core thermal-hydraulics (T-H) nodalization feature of the MARS/MASTER code is used to generate a high-fidelity solution to the OECD main steam line break benchmark problem and to investigate the effects of core T-H nodalization. The MARS/MASTER coupling scheme is introduced first that enables efficient refined node core T-H calculations via the COBRA-III module. The base solution is generated using a fine T-H nodalization consisting of fuel assembly-sized radial nodes. Sensitivity studies are performed on core T-H nodalization to examine the impacts on core reactivity, power distribution, and transient behavior. The results indicate that the error in the peak local power can be very large (up to 25%) with a coarse T-H nodalization because of the inability to incorporate detailed thermal feedback. A demonstrative departure from nucleate boiling (DNB) calculation shows no occurrence of DNB in this problem.