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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.
Allen J. Edwards, M. J. Bird, Michael K. Denham
Nuclear Technology | Volume 98 | Number 1 | April 1992 | Pages 70-78
Technical Paper | Fast Reactor Safety / Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT92-A34651
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the Sodium Entry Series (SES) experiments carried out at the Winfrith Technology Centre’s Molten Fuel Test Facility, thermite-generated, molten uranium dioxide is injected into test sections that represent fullscale typical geometries of a fast reactor subassembly. The test sections are initially full of sodium at 500°C. Comparisons with previous studies without sodium show that the molten material progressed for similar distances before freezing. In addition, there is a complete absence of molten fuel/coolant interactions in all the SES experiments. Consequently, it is concluded that the presence of sodium has little influence on the propagation of molten fuel through initially intact subassembly geometries.