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Two steps forward for U.K. advanced nuclear
This week, two significant announcements have emerged from the United Kingdom’s advanced reactor sector.
On June 14, Rolls-Royce, the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that they had signed two trilateral memorandums of cooperation to collaborate on “advanced modular reactor (AMR) technology, specifically high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), and the coated particle fuel these reactors will use.”
Separately, on June 16, Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower announced that its Natrium reactor design has been formally submitted for U.K. regulatory review. The company also announced the formation of a new subsidiary, TerraPower UK Ltd.
Izabela Gutowska, Taylor N. Coddington, Brian G. Woods (Oregon State Univ)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1183-1192
To support the development of the scientific and technical bases that could lead to the commercialization of the Pebble Bed High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor, Oregon State University (OSU) is in the process of developing a conceptual Pebble Bed experimental test program. OSU designed and constructed the integral effects test (IET) facility to study Very High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactors (VHTR). The facility, called the High Temperature Test Facility (HTTF), reproduces the integral transient thermal hydraulic response under various accidents conditions of the prototype reactor design. The test data will serve as a basis for thermal hydraulic code validation. The OSU HTTF, currently configured to model a prismatic core block design, may be capable of meeting the needs for a pebble bed reactor system integral test program. In order to do that, a redesign of the facility is required. Redesign criteria should not only conform to the existing facility layout but also follow the similarity criteria and be coherent with dimensional analyses with reference to the selected prototype, pebble bed reactor model. The objective of this paper is to expand the utilization of a currently operating integral gas cooled reactor thermal fluid test facility to the validation of the design and safety thermal-hydraulic methods of the pebble bed reactor. The experiments that will be used to generate data for the NGNP thermal-fluids validation matrix will most be related to the Chinese HTR-PM reference reactor via scaling relationships. This paper summarizes test facility redesign aspects including scaling parameters, materials selection, components replacement, heating concept and instrumentation needs.