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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.
Arif Nesimi Kiliç
Nuclear Technology | Volume 108 | Number 3 | December 1994 | Pages 413-420
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A35023
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple approximation for predicting the concrete erosion rate and depth is derived based on the heat balance integral method for conduction with the time-dependent boundary conditions. The problem is considered a four-region model including separate, moving heat sinks at the boundaries due to endothermic decomposition reactions. Polynomial temperature profiles are assumed, and the results are compared with previous experimental data and other analytical solutions. Since the technique provides an approximate temperature distribution on the average, it does not give the real temperature evaluation but provides a simple prediction of the erosion rates and the depth of defaulted concrete in terms of the parameters that are important during the physical phenomena. Because of its simplicity and reliability, the model might be useful for the larger molten core/concrete interaction codes and aerosol generation models.