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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.
Sang-Nyung Kim, Byung-Marn Koh, Joon-Suk Ji
Nuclear Technology | Volume 153 | Number 3 | March 2006 | Pages 304-314
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3709
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
When reactivity insertion such as refueling occurs in Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) reactors, the power and the water level are tilted in the upper outer zone of the liquid zone control system (LZCS) and fluctuate unstably for a certain period of time (1 to 5 days). Such instability is observed in most of the CANDU reactors in service around the world, but neither its root cause has been identified nor have solutions against it been established. Therefore, this study experimentally and analytically attempted to prove that the root cause lies in the holdup of light water on the top of the tube support plate (TSP) due to the mismatch between the net volumetric flow rate of light water and helium crossing the narrowed porous TSP installed within the LZCS compartment by performing hydrodynamic simulation of the inflow/outflow of light water and helium. Two solutions against the aforementioned instability of LZCS were suggested. One is to regulate volumes of helium gas flowing into the compartment and light water flowing therefrom, and the other is to enlarge the flowing paths of helium and light water within the TSP. The former may be applicable to nuclear reactors in service and the latter to those planned to be constructed.