Supercritical-water-cooled reactor development

Kaneda, J., Kasahara, S., Kano, F., Saito, N., Shikama, T., Matsui, H., 2011. Material development for supercritical water-cooled reactor. In Proc. ISSCWR-5, Vancouver, BC, Canada, March 13—16. 

Yetisir, M., Gaudet, M., Rhodes, D., Guzonas, D., Hamilton, H., Haque, Z., Fencer, J., Sartipi, A., 2014. Reactor core and plant design of the Canadian supercritical water-cooled reactor. In Froc. 2014 Canada—China Conference on Advanced Reactor Development (CCCARD-2014), Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, April 27-30, 2014. 

In addition to HTR and SFR, the other Generation IV concepts are also supported by different government agencies. The supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) was supported under the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 project) by the China Ministry of Science. The studies of molten salt reactors (MSRs) and lead-cooled fast reactors (LFRs) are performed in the framework of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) pilot projects. In the following section, the current research and development (R D) on Generation IV reactors in China will be briefly introduced. 

Supercritical water-cooled reactor research and development... 

Concepts of nuclear reactors cooled with water at supercritical pressures were studied as early as the 1950s and 1960s in the US and Russia. After a 30-year break, the idea of developing nuclear reactors cooled with supercritical water (SCW) became attractive again as the ultimate development path for water cooling. This statement is based on the known history of the thermal power industry, which made a revolutionary step forward from the level of subcritical pressures (15—16 MPa) to the level of supercritical pressures (23.5—35 MPa) more than 50 years ago with the same major objective as that of supercritical water-cooled reactors (SCWRs) to increase thermal efficiency of power plants. The main objectives of using SCW in nuclear reactors are (1) to increase the thermal efficiency of modem nuclear power plants (NPPs) from 30—35% to about 45—50% and (2) to decrease capital and operational costs and, hence decrease electrical energy costs. 

M. Yetisir, M. Gaudet, D. Rhodes, Development and integration of Canadian SCWR concept with counter-flow fuel assembly, in ISSCWR-6 The 6th International Symposium on Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactors, March 3—7, 2013, CGNPC, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. China, 2013. Paper ISSCWR6-13059. 

V. Subramanian, JM. Joseph, H. Subramanian, J.J. Noel, D.A. Guzonas, J.C. Wren, Steady-state radiolysis of supercritical water model development, predictions and validation, in 7th International Symposium on Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactors (TSSCWR-7), Match 15-18, 2015. Helsinki, Finland, Paper ISSCWR7-2083. 

G.P. Gu, W. Zheng, D. Guzonas, Corrosion database for SCWR development, in 2nd Canada-China Joint Workshop on Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactors (CCSC-2010) Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April 25—28, 2010. 

J. Kaneda, S. Kasahara, F. Kano, N. Saito, T. Shikama, H. Matsui, Materials development for supercritical water-cooled reactor, in ISSCWR-5 The 5th International Symposium on SCWR, March 13—16, 2011, Canadian Nuclear Society, Vancouver, Canada, Toronto, Ontario, 2011. Paper P102. 

The supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) and molten salt-cooled reactor (MSR) are promising prospects, but need extensive developments to achieve the same level of maturity as the previous ones. 

Finally the molten salt-cooled reactor (MSR) and supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) are promising prospects, but need extensive material developments. They offer challenging operating conditions, mostly due to compatibility with the process fluids, as will be shortly described further. Limited data are available to allow for an optimized selection of construction materials. Austenitic stainless steels do not clearly appear to be the best choice for these applications, due to strong interactions with the aggressive environments. 

G. Heusener, U. Muller, T. Schulenberg and D. Square, A European Development Program for a High Performance Light Water Reactor (HPLWR), Proc. 1 Int. Symp. on Supercritical Water-cooled Reactors, Tokyo, Japan, November 6-9, 2000, Paper 102 (2000)... 

J. Buongiomo, The Supercritical Water Cooled Reactor Ongoing Research and Development in the U.S., Proc. ICAPP 04, Pittsburgh, PA, June 13-17, 2004, Paper 4229 (2004)... 

From the beginning of the conceptual study on supercritical water cooled reactors, several plant transient analysis codes have been developed, modified, and applied to them [1-9]. The general name of these codes is Supercritical Pressure Reactor Accident and Transient analysis code (SPRAT). SPRAT mainly calculates mass and energy conservations, fuel rod heat conduction, and point kinetics. The relation among these calculations is shown in Fig. 4.1. SPRAT can deal with flow, pressure, and reactivity induced transients and accidents at supercritical pressure. The flow chart is shown in Fig. 4.2. 

There have been extensive research and development (R D) activities on the Super Light Water Reactor (Super LWR), the Super Fast Reactor (Super FR), and other supercritical water-cooled reactors (SCWR, SCPR) in Japan. The major ones are listed this section. 

H. Matusi, Y. Sato, et al., Material Development for Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactors, Proc. ICAPP 07, Nice, France, May 13-18, 2007, Paper No. 7447 (2007)... 

S. M. Modro, The Supercritical Water Cooled Reactor Research and Development in the US, Proc. ICAPP 05, Seoul, Korea, May 15-19, 2005, Paper No. 5694 (2005)... 

Since OO s Gydropress has developed supercritical water-cooled water-moderated power reactors (WER-SKD) in two circuit (with steam generators) and direct cycle configurations. The more advanced direct cycle concept has the following characteristics, as shown in Table 12.9 (Sidorenko, 2010 Glebov et al., 2014 Gabriel et al., 2013). 

The design concept of a light water cooled reactor operating at supercritical pressure was devised by one of this book s authors, Y. Oka [2, 3]. The reactor concept has been actively developed within his research group at the University of Tokyo [4-8]. It adopts a once-though coolant cycle without recirculation and a reactor pressure vessel (RPV) as shown in Fig. 1.5. 

LWRs were developed 50 years ago. Their successful implementation was based in part on experiences with subcritical fossil-fuel fired power technologies at that time. The number of supercritical FPPs worldwide is larger than that of nuclear power plants. Considering the evolutionary history of boilers and the abundant experiences with supercritical FPP technologies, the supercritical pressure light water cooled reactor is the natural evolution of LWRs. 

J.H. Lee, S. Koshizuka and Y. Oka, Development of a LOCA Analysis Code for the Supercritical-Pressure Light Water Cooled Reactors, Annals of Nuclear Energy, Vol. 25 (16), 1341-1361 (1998)... 

S. Shiga, K. Moriya, Y. Oka, S. Yoshida, H. Takahashi, Progress of Development Project of Supercritical Water Cooled Power Reactor, 2003, Proc. ICAPP 03, Cordoba, Spain, May 4-7, 2003, Paper 3258 (2003)... 

A. Shioiri, K. Moriya, et al., Development of Supercritical-Water Cooled Power Reactor Conducted by a Japanese Joint Team, Proc. GENES4/ANP2003, Kyoto, Japan, September 15-19, 2003, Paper 1121 (2003)... 

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