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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.
Ser Gi Hong, Sang Ji Kim, Yeong Il Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 162 | Number 1 | April 2008 | Pages 1-25
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT162-1-25
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Annular sodium-cooled fast reactor cores [600 MW(electric)] with low sodium void worth are developed for burning transuranic nuclides discharged from light water reactors. The several core design variants are developed by changing the core configuration, the core height, the fuel assembly design and type of nonfuel assemblies in the core, and their core performance parameters including safety-related reactivity coefficients are analyzed and inter-compared. The study focuses on the core neutronic parameters without going into the detailed safety and material compatibility studies. The study shows that the several cores of the annular type can be designed to have low sodium void worth, high transmutation capability, and all the negative temperature reactivity coefficients except for the positive one related to coolant expansion that can be compensated for by the reactivity coefficients by the fuel axial expansion and the fuel Doppler effects under the off-normal events, which increase temperatures. Of the cores considered, the use of a larger central control region and fuel assemblies with high coolant flow area in the core boundaries is found to be the most effective and simple way to achieve low sodium void worth and high transmutation capability.