Reactor prototype

The French decision in 2006 to realise a Generation IV nuclear reactor prototype by year 2020 has led to promote the sodium fast reactor as the reference solution. The maximum temperature available with this type of nuclear reactor is around 500°C. If such a reactor is used to produce hydrogen, using a thermochemical cycle, it is necessary to find a thermochemical cycle compatible with this level of temperature. 

The nuclear future may well lie with the fast breeder reactor which uses uranium some 60 times more efficiently than current fission reactors. Prototype breeder reactors are in operation in Russia and Japan and were so until recently in the UK and France. They will be required post-2030 or so if a major new nuclear programme is embarked on, as uranium resources are predicted to start running into short supply at about that time. 

As in any slurry based process, complex hydrodynamic behavior complicates the scale up to a commercial size unit. Therefore, computational modeling supported by cold flow x-ray mapping tests on a pilot reactor prototype has been used to assist the reactor development efforts. Operation of a 2 bpd Fischer Tropsch pilot plant began in 2003 and has continued through 2004 at the BP Chemicals Saltend site. 

The French fast reactor prototype Phenix, located at Marcoule in the Card department, was put into commercial operation in 1974. The total time of power operation of the plant is approximately 100 000 hours. The initial objective of Fast Breeder Reactor demonstration has been achieved. Since the mid-nineties, the role of the reactor as an irradiation facility has been enqjhasized, particularly in support of the CEA s transmutation R D programme in the context of the 30 December 1991 French law on long-lived radioactive waste management. This new objective has required the extension of the planned reactor lifetime. A renovation programme was defined based on ... 

Reactor. Prototype/experimental sodium-cooled breeder reactor power plant. 

ZPPR-1 IA,I IB Radially heterogeneous reactors prototypic of a Westinghouse reactor design. They have a central blanket and three fuel rings separated by blanket zones. Twenty-four sodium-filled CRPs will be present. The core fuel volume fraction of 0.39 in IIA will be reduced to 0 32 in I IB. Criticality of li A is expected in November 1979. 

The ELENA at 3.3 MW(th) is based on well proven technology of light water reactors with uranium dioxide fuel its thermoelectric conversion array for providing electricity for on-site use is supported by the operating space reactor prototype, GAMMA. 

After the respective R D preliminaries, the nucleus of the fast reactor prototype SNR-300 developed towards realization in 1972, when international groupings of utilities and manufacturers of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany were founded in order to build the plant as Kalkar Nuclear Power Plant on the Rhine river banks close to the border with the Netherlands. Construction began early in 1973 after the concept and first erection license was granted in December 1972. In March 1991, the German Federal Minister of Research and Development announced the unconditional abandonment of the project after a thorough evaluation of the overall situation. 

Nuclear Engineering International, 21, 246, 39 (1976), SNR-300, Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor Prototype Plant. 

Like the reactor-prototype BN-800 has a three-circuit flow scheme with sodium coolant in the primary and secondary systems and water-steam in the tertiary circuit (Fig. 9.25). The reactor plant comprises the fast nuclear reactor with three primary loops, three secondary loops and three steam generators of sectional-modular type. The reactor uses the... 

Figure 3. Sublimation rate of naphthalene in various cell-reactor prototypes as influenced...

The CAREM reactor prototype core melt frequency is 9.2x lO /year. This value is based on a level HI PSA of CAREM-25 NPP and an expert judgement of changes introduced in the design to increase safety. 

Probability of unacceptable radioactivity release beyond tbe plant boundaries The large release probability of the CAREM reactor prototype is 5.2xlO Vyear, which may make it possible to simplify or abandon off-site emergency planning requirements. 

Integral primary system reactors used classical PWR or BWR technologies but this configuration is a new approach that needs demonstration. Demonstration is the final step in the RD D and system verification strategy and it should be performed unless other strategies are possible and convenient due to, for example, economic reasons. RD D costs for safety acceptance of different options should be compared. A CAREM reactor prototype will be constructed because it is the cheaper strategy in the context of CAREM. 

In Table 1 some representative data are collected relevant to a typical 500 MWe CIRENE design (ref. 1). They have been compared with the corresponding data reported for a 350 MWe SGHWR design and for the 250 MWe CANDU-BLW reactor prototype (refs 2, 3). 

The development of heavy liquid metal reactors (HLMRs) in Russia stems from its experience with Pb—Bi eutectic coolants in Soviet Alpha-class submarines. Altogether, USSR had eight nuclear submarines and two on-the-ground Pb—Bi-cooled reactor prototypes. Details of the submarine experience are extensively presented... 

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