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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.
Yong Soo Kim, Chang Hwan Park, Byoung Uhn Bae, Goon Cherl Park, Kune Yull Suh, Un Chul Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 149 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 200-216
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3590
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study concerns the development of an integrated calculation methodology with which to continually and consistently analyze the progression of an accident from the design-basis accident phase via core uncovery to the severe accident phase. The depletion rate of reactor coolant inventory was experimentally investigated after the safety injection failure during a large-break loss-of-coolant accident utilizing the Seoul National University Integral Test Facility (SNUF), which is scaled down to 1/6.4 in length and 1/178 in area from the APR1400 [Advanced Power Reactor 1400 MW(electric)]. The experimental results showed that the core coolant inventory decreased five times faster before than after the extinction of sweepout in the reactor downcomer, which is induced by the incoming steam from the intact cold legs. The sweepout occurred on top of the spillover from the downcomer region and expedited depletion of the core coolant inventory. The test result was simulated with the MAAP4 severe accident analysis code. The calculation results of the original MAAP4 deviated from the test data in terms of coolant inventory distribution in the test vessel. After the calculation algorithm of coolant level distribution was improved by including the subroutine of pseudo pressure buildup, which accounts for the differential pressure between the core and downcomer in MAAP4, the core melt progression was delayed by hundreds of seconds, and the code prediction was in reasonable agreement with the overall behavior of the SNUF experiment.