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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.
Marie Y. Arrieta, Dennis D. Keiser, Jr., Delia Perez-Nunez, Sean M. McDeavitt
Nuclear Technology | Volume 199 | Number 2 | August 2017 | Pages 219-226
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1336028
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fluidized bed–chemical vapor deposition (FB-CVD) process was designed and established in a two-part experiment to produce zirconium nitride barrier coatings on uranium-molybdenum particles for a reduced enrichment dispersion fuel concept. A hot-wall, inverted fluidized bed reaction vessel was developed for this process, and coatings were produced from thermal decomposition of the metallo-organic precursor tetrakis(dimethylamino)zirconium (TDMAZ) in high-purity argon gas. Experiments were executed at atmospheric pressure and low substrate temperatures (i.e., 500 to 550 K). Deposited coatings were characterized using scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, and wavelength dispersive spectroscopy. Successful depositions were produced on 1 mm diameter tungsten wires and fluidized ZrO2-SiO2 microspheres (185 to 250 µm diameter) with coating thicknesses ranging from 0.5 to 30 μm. The coating deposition rate was nominally estimated to be 0.04 ± 0.02 µm/h. The ZrN coating adhered to the microspheres, but there was a significant oxygen and possible carbon contamination.