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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.
Francesc Reventós, José Sánchez-Baptista, Alberto Pérez Navas, Pablo Moreno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 90 | Number 3 | June 1990 | Pages 294-307
Technical Paper | RELAP/MOD2 / Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT90-A34395
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The thermal-hydraulic analysis group at Asociación Nuclear Ascó has prepared a model of the plant using RELAP5/MOD2. Protection and control sys-tems have been added as well as a kinetic model in order to accurately analyze plant transients. A new system to record process information collected by plant instrumentation is being installed and will provide a more accurate follow-up of operational and incidental transients of the plant. The current recording system provides adequate information in terms of safety and operation, but there are some interpretation problems when it is used to validate a thermal-hydraulic model. Under these conditions, the selection of transients to assess has been the most important step on qualifying the model. Once a steady-state calculation is achieved, six actual transients are selected to validate the model. From this analysis, it is concluded that the level of qualification of the model is sufficient to validate the predictions of the behavior of the plant under such situations. This process will continue for other transients to broaden the capabilities of the model.