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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.
Siegfried Jacobi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 91 | Number 2 | August 1990 | Pages 146-153
Technical Paper | Safety of Next Generation Power Reactor / Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT90-A34424
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Possible plutonium contamination of the primary loop and potential cooling disturbances, both due to cladding breaches, result in two areas that need to be considered: (a) the behavior of defective fuel subassemblies transferred to in-vessel storage and (b) the occurrence of new defects in the cladding tubes at the end of service life. A response to the resulting requirement of cladding tube monitoring during in-vessel storage is given, and the following solution is proposed: If fuel subassemblies are stored in in-vessel drums, the defect can be temporarily exposed by rotating the drum and exposing the subassemblies to different levels of residual neutron radiation intensity. Fission products escaping during this process are measured by delayed neutron monitors, as applied in normal operation.