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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.
Masato Takahashi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 156 | Number 2 | November 2006 | Pages 140-149
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3780
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radioactive fission gases (krypton and xenon) are observed in boiling water reactor (BWR) plants without defective fuel under various operation conditions. The off-gas in a BWR plant without defective fuel arises from fissile impurities within the cladding materials and/or fissile material deposited on the cladding surface. To estimate the off-gas source in operating plants, the source estimation method considering the off-gas transport time from production to measurement was applied to the data collected under various plant operation conditions. This method was verified by the adaptation of three sets of off-gas data groups to the source of cladding impurity and/or deposition actually observed in the plants. The judgment as to whether off-gas derives from a cladding impurity or a deposition was made by analyzing the data of 11 BWRs with different off-gas levels.