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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.
John Sorensen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 83 | Number 3 | December 1988 | Pages 383-395
Technical Paper | Fifth International Retran Meeting / Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34151
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The possibility of instabilities under certain conditions of operation has been a special concern for boiling water reactors (BWRs). A stability analysis is performed to demonstrate that the total system and its primary components are inherently stable over the allowable operating envelope. The current methodology used by BWR fuel vendors for core reactivity and channel hydrodynamic stability is based on frequency domain analysis. RETRAN is the Electric Power Research Institute time domain system transient analysis code that is widely used by domestic and foreign utilities. RETRAN allows the reactor system to be modeled in a highly accurate manner including all important phenomena (linear and nonlinear) associated with anticipated and unforeseen conditions of operation. RETRAN is demonstrated to be adequate for the analysis of total plant stability, core reactivity stability, and channel hydrodynamic stability. All key phenomena are adequately modeled by RETRAN and core reactivity analyses have been shown to agree well with measured plant data.