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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.
Everett L. Redmond II, John M. Ryskamp
Nuclear Technology | Volume 95 | Number 3 | September 1991 | Pages 272-286
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT91-A34577
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three-dimensional continuous-energy coupled neutron-gamma Monte Carlo models of the Advanced Neutron Source (ANS) final preconceptual and conceptual reference core designs have been developed using the Monte Carlo Neutron and Photon transport code (MCNP) Version 3b. These models contain the reactor core with control rods, the heavy water reflector tank with shutdown rods and some beam tubes, and the outer light water pool. Eighty homogenized fuel zones per fuel element are used to represent the radial and axial 235U fuel distribution. These models are the most sophisticated, physically accurate reactor physics models of the ANS currently available. The use of MCNP methods and applications to the ANS are demonstrated. Beam tube studies, coolant voiding studies, and many criticality studies have already been performed, as have studies with variance reduction techniques. In comparison with deterministic methods, MCNP proves superior in calculating the core multiplication factor and neutron fluxes in the reflector. The MCNP code offers the ANS project the capability of performing complicated reactor physics calculations not currently possible with most deterministic methods.