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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.
Bassam I. Shamoun, Michael L. Corradini
Nuclear Technology | Volume 120 | Number 2 | November 1997 | Pages 158-170
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35424
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The thermal interaction of certain molten materials such as Al2O3 with water results in vapor explosions with very high (supercritical) pressures and propagation velocities. A quasi-steady-state analysis and a transient analysis of a supercritical vapor explosion in one-dimensional multiphase flow were applied to analyze experimental data of an Al2O3-water fuel/coolant interaction obtained from the KROTOS 26, 28, 29, and 30 tests. The shock adiabatic thermodynamic model and the TEXAS mechanistic model were used to perform this analysis. The predicted results of the initial vapor void fraction and explosion conversion ratio from both models, together with the estimated experimental results, for the KROTOS 26 test were compared.