Fuel storage facilities for 200-MW nuclear heating reactor

Abstract

This paper reflects the thoughts and work concerning considerations and design of 200-MW nuclear heating reactor (NHR-200) developed in Institute of Nuclear Energy Technology (INET), Tsinghua University, China. Due to the fact that the size of heating reactors is limited to the local demands which are generally smaller that the economic reasonable size as compared to those reactors for electricity production, the design of systems for NHR-200 should be specified in accordance with its design characteristics, and simplified as much as possible for economic aim. The nuclear heating reactor has a low power density in the core and that the annual generation period is only about 180 days. Therefore, the total required number of fuel bundles is rather small. Furthermore, in-vessel spent fuel storage is feasible. All these features raise the potential to simplify the fuel storage system for NHR-200. The fuel storage and inspection facilities are described.