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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.
Kwang J. Jeong, Joon Lim, Il S. Hwang, Hee D. Kim, Martin M. Pilch, Tze Y. Chu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 143 | Number 3 | September 2003 | Pages 347-357
Technical Paper | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3422
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
High-temperature creep tests were performed with an SA533B1 low-alloy steel under both constant load and constant stress conditions. Using the measured minimum creep strain rates as a function of stress and temperature, least-square fittings were made into a Bailey-Norton-type power law equation. Based on the constant stress test results, a constitutive equation was developed for steady-state creep. The constitutive equation was then implemented in elastic-viscoplastic analysis of the lower head of a pressurized water reactor's reactor pressure vessel using a commercial FEM code named ABAQUS 5.8. The FEM model was validated using measured data from the lower head failure experiment conducted at the Sandia National Laboratories. The FEM model using the creep constitutive equation was shown to be capable of accurately predicting the lower head deformation behavior. Additional work, however, is needed to rationalize apparent inconsistency between the constant load data and constant stress data.