Principal Investigator
at MIT: Professor Mujid S. Kazimi
Co-Principal
Investigator at MIT: Dr. Pavel Hejzlar
Principal Investigator
at Masdar Institute: Professor Youssef Shatilla
Description and Objectives
This project will examine approaches for evolution of the design of nuclear power plants to address future needs of electricity, drinkable water, and hydrogen through a highly efficient and environmentally friendly reactor (HEER). HEER will have high power conversion efficiency, with minimum production of spent fuel and waste. This advanced reactor will utilize innovative fuel designs to enable efficient fuel utilization and heating the coolant to a higher temperature in an integral vessel for the reactor and steam generation to maximize the power plant efficiency and safety. A reduction in the spent fuel production rate by a factor of two or more in comparison to today's reactors in Europe and Japan is anticipated. Finally, to be ready for deployment in the Middle East, the new reactor concept has to exhibit an added level of proliferation resistance.
The project intends to examine the use of novel reactor designs to achieve its goals using water-cooled reactors or salt-cooled reactors. A comparison of the various features of the new concepts will be performed at the end of project.
Approach
The following tasks are planned to achieve the project objectives:
a. Extending the core power density to the extent possible within the same, or even an improved, safety margin using annular fuel instead of solid fuel. This will require enhancing the steam generator capacity, but not the maximum temperature of the coolants.
b. The increase in fuel initial enrichment from the current 5% to the maximum allowed civilian fuel enrichment of 20% while maintaining the appropriate burnable poisons to manage the neutronic reactivity in the core. This should allow the reduction of the fuel volume by a factor of two or more. The second concept will focus on increased efficiency for electricity production while maintaining attractively high power density. The assessment of the feasibility and potential of this concept will require the following activities:
1. Review of fluoride and chloride liquid salt coolants and the selection of the most promising candidate for the proposed thermal reactor concept. In addition, materials that are compatible with the salts at high temperatures and for cladding material can sustain projected exposure will be evaluated.
2. Conceptual design of the thermal reactor core that can accommodate high power density of 50KW/l or more. This is significantly higher power density than the densities achieved in the Advanced High Temperature Reactor.
3. Conceptual redesign of steam generators to allow production of superheated steam to fit them into one integrated vessel with the core and conceptual design of decay heat removal systems.
Additional activities include:
- Review of the status of direct cycle supercritical water cooled reactor as a third potential candidate will be performed and its potential performance compared to the above two concepts.
- An evaluation of the use of part of the rejected heat to power a desalination plant on the basis of RO will be evaluated. A review of the national and international efforts in hydrogen generation by high temperature solid oxide electrolysis will be made.
Progress
Two major concerns about implementation of annular fuel to achieve high burnup in the pressurized water-cooled (PWR) integrated reactor International Reactor Innovative and Secure (IRIS), one of the reactor design concepts, were resolved. Specifically, the reactivity shutdown margin of PWRs using this fuel was increased to a sufficient amount by changing the control rod material from Ag-In-Cd to B4C, and the thermal-hydraulic performance of the fuel while subject to potential inner channel flow constrictions due to partial entrance blockage and crud/oxide growth was deemed satisfactory.
A High Efficiency and Environmentally Friendly Nuclear Reactor for Electricityand Hydrogen
Integration of Renewable Energy Sources in Power
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