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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.
Yuh-Ming Ferng, Bau-Shei Pei, Tuan-Ji Ding
Nuclear Technology | Volume 109 | Number 3 | March 1995 | Pages 398-411
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35088
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During the past years, a number of reduced-scale test facilities have been constructed to investigate the physical phenomena of transients or accidents occurring in nuclear power plants. Since the behavior of a nuclear power plant is complicated, it is quite impossible for a small-scaled facility to simulate all the physical phenomena during the transient process. But, by way of proper scaling, most of the important aspects of transient behavior can be simulated. Calculations using RELAP5/MOD3 investigate whether most of the key thermal-hydraulic phenomena observed in the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research Integral System Test (IIST) facility can be expected in a prototype plant. When compared with experimental data, the calculated results of two different scale models show reasonable agreement with the natural circulation transients. The scale-up capability of RELAP5/MOD3 is demonstrated by simulating the single-phase and two-phase natural circulation transients. Also, the scaling distortions in the heat transfer areas of the IIST facility do not strongly distort the thermal-hydraulic behavior of experimental data.