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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.
Gary R. Smolen, Raymond C. Lloyd, Hideyuki Funabashi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 107 | Number 3 | September 1994 | Pages 304-325
Technical Paper | Nuclear Criticality Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A35010
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of critical experiments was performed with mixed plutonium-uranium nitrate solutions in two cylinders and in a variable thickness slab tank. The solution concentrations ranged from 12 to 174 g Pu/ℓ with Pu/Pu+U ratios of 0.5, 0.4, and 0.2. The criticality data were used to validate two versions of the SCALE computer code system (SCALE-4 and SCALE-2). Calculations were performed with the 27-energy-group cross-section library, derived from the Evaluated Nuclear Data File B-Version IV. The average calculated keff for all geometries (39 experiments) is 1.006 (σ = 0.006), calculated with SCALE-4, and 1.004 (σ = 0.007), calculated with SCALE-2. Overall, the range of calculated keff varied from 0.989 to 1.019. These experiments covered a wide range of parameters, with variations in physical, chemical, and neutronic parameters.