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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.
Jan Marivoet, Eef Weetjens
Nuclear Technology | Volume 163 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 74-84
Technical Paper | High-Level Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3971
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents evaluations of the impact of six advanced fuel cycles, ranging from the present "once-through" fuel cycle in light water reactors to a gas-cooled fast reactor with fully recycling of all actinides, on geological disposal in a clay formation. Both the dimensions and the radiological consequences of a geological repository for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) and spent fuel are estimated. After a 50-yr cooling time, the thermal output of the HLW arising from advanced fuel cycles is significantly lower than that of spent fuel. This allows the dimensions of the geological repository to be reduced. The impact of advanced fuel cycles on the radiological consequences in the case of the expected evolution scenario is rather limited. The maximum dose, which is expected to occur a few tens of thousands of years after the disposal of the waste, is essentially due to fission products, and their amount is approximately proportional to the heat generated by nuclear fission. An important contributor to the total dose is 129I; the amount of 129I going into a repository strongly depends on the fraction of spent fuel that is reprocessed. By considering the evolution of the radiotoxicity of the waste, it can be expected that the radiological consequences of human intrusions into a repository will be significantly lower in the case of waste arising from advanced fuel cycles.