Abstract
A supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) adopts a once-through direct cycle, which is compatible with a small modular reactor class (SMR) plant system. The core is cooled by supercritical light water, which does not exhibit phase change, but undergoes large temperature and density changes. A super fast reactor (Super FR) is a fast reactor type concept of SCWR. Unlike other SCWR core concepts, it adopts the single coolant pass flow scheme, in which the coolant passes the core only once from the bottom to the top without any reverse flows or preheating stages. In the meantime, reducing the core size tends to increase the core power peaking and reduce criticality. Therefore, the key issues with the small Super FR core design is reducing the core power peaking and achieving high average core outlet temperature with the single coolant pass scheme. This study aims to highlight the design issues through conceptual core designs of SMR class Super FR. To evaluate the core characteristics, three-dimensional coupled core calculations are carried out. The proposed design with small fuel assemblies, which are equivalent to those of boiling water reactors, attains a high core average outlet temperature of about 500 °C, which is compatible to that of typical large SCWR core design.
Highlights
A supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) is one of the Generation IV reactor concepts, which is based on the current light water reactor (LWR) and supercritical pressure fossil fired power plant technologies
One of the studies on small modular reactor class (SMR)-scale SCWR is the Canadian pressure tube type reactor concept, SUPERSAFE, which is aimed at 300 MWe (670 MWth)
The target power for the SMR class core concept to be developed in this study is tentatively determined as about 650 MWth, which corresponds to 300 MWe with assumption of thermal efficiency of 43.8%
Summary
A supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) is one of the Generation IV reactor concepts, which is based on the current light water reactor (LWR) and supercritical pressure fossil fired power plant technologies. One of the studies on SMR-scale SCWR is the Canadian pressure tube type reactor concept, SUPERSAFE, which is aimed at 300 MWe (670 MWth). It adopts reactor grade PuO2 and ThO2 fuel, cooled by supercritical light water and moderated by D2O [3]. Raising the average core outlet temperature is one of the main design issues of SCWR concept as it has large impact on the plant thermal efficiency [6,7]. The target power for the SMR class core concept to be developed in this study is tentatively determined as about 650 MWth, which corresponds to 300 MWe with assumption of thermal efficiency of 43.8%. The purpose of this study is to reveal the impact of reducing the core size on the above core characteristics and propose a design concept with a design target of: average core outlet temperature of 500 ◦C with additional design target parameters, which are described in the following chapter
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