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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.
Seungmin Oh, Haijing Gao, Shripad T. Revankar
Nuclear Technology | Volume 158 | Number 2 | May 2007 | Pages 208-218
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3836
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An experimental study and best-estimate thermal-hydraulic code model assessment is performed to investigate the characteristics of the filmwise condensation with and without noncondensable gas in a passive condenser system. A vertical condenser tube is submerged in a water pool, where the heat from the condenser tube is removed through boiling heat transfer. Data are obtained for various inlet steam flow rates and noncondensable gas mass fractions at various system pressure conditions for two tube inner diameters: 26.6 and 52.5 mm. Experimental data are compared with analysis for complete condensation and flow-through conditions. Degradation of the condensation with noncondensable gas is investigated, where the condensation heat transfer coefficient decreases with the noncondensable gas. Experimental results are simulated with the RELAP5 code using two different condensation models. Code predictions are compared with experimental data, and the results indicate that there is a need for improved condensation models in RELAP5.