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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.
S. Usman, B. S. Mohammad, S. Abdallah
Nuclear Technology | Volume 159 | Number 3 | September 2007 | Pages 310-318
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3878
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Transient response of a natural convection system is investigated by numerical simulation using FLUENT code. An integrator circuit analogy was recently proposed for natural convection systems. The proposed analogy was further confirmed by these recent simulations. New simulation results also suggest that a natural convection system acts as a "low-pass" filter for transients. Transmission characteristics of a natural convection system were investigated using sinusoidal temperature at the source-side boundary. Transient transmission factor was found to be a function of both fluid properties and the flow characteristics. Transmission factor was also found to be a strong function of fluctuation frequency. These results may prove a significant design tool for Generation IV natural convection systems, particularly for lead-cooled fast reactors or molten salt reactors.