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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.
Yun-Je Cho, Hyoung-Kyu Cho, Goon-Cherl Park
Nuclear Technology | Volume 162 | Number 1 | April 2008 | Pages 92-106
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3935
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Seoul National University (SNU) proposed a new concept of a reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS), which is a critical safety feature in high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. To provide reasonable experimental data for the code assessment and evaluate the feasibility of the proposed system, performance and integrity were tested by separate-effects test apparatuses and a reduced-scale mockup facility named RCCS-SNU. Calculations were performed using the MARS-GCR code for the validation of its capability to simulate multidimensional behavior, natural convective heat transfer, radiative heat transfer, etc. This assessment showed that the MARS-GCR code reasonably predicts the characteristics of the radiative heat transfer in the cavity and the forced convective heat transfer through the air-cooling pipes. However, the study showed deviation in the simulation of heat transfers that occur inside the cavity and water pool, especially the thermal stratification phenomenon. As a result, it was concluded that applying the system code with coarse node, MARS-GCR had certain limitations in the simulation of local phenomena.