Publication Laka-library:
Design of a U-Battery (2011)
| Author | M.Ding, J.L.Kloosterman, T.Kooijmans, R.Linssen |
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1-01-8-38-01.pdf |
| Date | November 2011 |
| Classification | 1.01.8.38/01 (URENCO/UCN ALMELO - U-BATTERY REACTOR) |
| Front |
From the publication:
Design of a U-Battery® Delft, November 2011 PNR-131-2011-014 Authors TU-Delft: Ming Ding, Jan Leen Kloosterman, Theo Kooijman, Rik Linssen Authors Manchester University: Tim Abram, Barry Marsden, Tony Wickham A study sponsored by Urenco, and Koopman and Witteveen. Executive Summary 1. Introduction In the past fifty years, the size of nuclear reactors has grown from 200 MWth to more than 4.500 MWth in order to make full use of economy of scale. Because large-size nuclear reactors usually require high capital investment and heavily rely on the infrastructure of the nuclear sites, this has motivated designers to develop small modular reactors, especially for developing countries and remote areas off main power grids. Major drawback of most of these small modular reactor designs is that new technology is introduced, which has to be developed and licensed. This will normally take decades in a nuclear environment. To be economically feasible a small modular reactor should work like a battery. The reactor and the energy conversion system are brought to the purchaser’s site as modules, the electricity is hooked up and the reactor will run for 5 years or more with a minimum of operational personnel. This allows the modules to be manufactured in series and transported to the purchaser’s site by rail, barge, truck, etc. After operation of 5-10 years, the reactor can be brought back to the factory for refueling or can be directly replaced by a new module. This modular and standardized approach will, with increasing sales, result in significant cost reduction by economy of number. On top of this a user in an industrialized area will save the yearly cost of the power grid infrastructure. This report presents a feasibility study for the design of an intrinsically safe modular nuclear power generation system that combines quick-developed till commercial design using proven technology with the basic features to profit from economy of number. The investigation shows that the proposed 10MWth UBattery ® design is very promising to fulfill all the above requirements. The study is executed by the Delft University of Technology together with the University of Manchester and is sponsored by URENCO and Koopman & Witteveen.