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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.
David C. Wade, Edward K. Fujita
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 103 | Number 2 | October 1989 | Pages 182-195
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE89-6
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Favorable passive reactivity shutdown performance in response to unprotected accident initiators has been shown to be achievable when several measurable, integral reactivity parameters related to the power, flow, and inlet temperature coefficients of reactivity satisfy certain simple constraints among their dimensionless ratios. The trends in these dimensionless ratios with reactor size for both oxide- and metal-fueled cores have been developed, based on a data base of ∼24 reactor designs in the range from 400 to 3600 MW(thermal). Based on the trends, it is possible to conclude that the favorable passive reactivity shutdown features that accrue to the metallic-fueled reactors in the mod-ular-size range can be achieved as well in the larger commercial sizes.