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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.
Jae-Hyuk Eoh, Ji-Woong Han, Tae-Ho Lee, Seong-O Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 170 | Number 2 | May 2010 | Pages 290-305
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A9484
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To enhance the operational reliability of a purely passive decay heat removal system in KALIMER, which is named PDRC, three design options to prevent sodium freezing in an intermediate decay heat removal circuit were proposed, and their feasibilities have been studied for an entire plant operation mode. The potential candidates for the new design options are (a) the partially immersed DHX concept, (b) the cavity air cooling system-coupled PDRC concept, and (c) the advanced PDRC concept with alternative cooling medium. The design features of each concept are quantitatively evaluated in this study. For all the options, more specific design considerations were made to confirm their feasibility to properly materialize their concepts in a practical system design procedure, and the general definitions for a purely passive concept and its design features have been discussed as well.