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Conference Article: ACACIA-Indirect: A Small Scale Nuclear Plant for New Markets

Abstract

A 60 MWth, 23 MWe pebble bed HTR plant with indirect Brayton cycle is proposed for the applications of heat and power cogeneration or distributed electricity generation. The reactor will be cooled by helium, whereas for the secondary cycle nitrogen is proposed as a heat carrier. Economic performance is being optimized by simplification of the nuclear part and by the exclusive use of commercially proven systems in the energy conversion part. Cogeneration and maximised electricity production will be the two applications discussed. The pebble bed reactor will be of the cartridge type, refuelled off-line only once every three years. Excess reactivity will be controlled by burnable poison in the reflector. Optimization of burnable poison distribution will be discussed for two core geometries, a cylindrical and an annular one. It is shown that in an annular core burnable poison can be distributed in such a way that the reactor will be able to operate for three years with a sufficiently small overreactivity margin.

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Reference:

Proceedings of the Conference on High Temperature Reactors, Petten, NL, April 22-24, 2002
Organized by HTR-TN in cooperation with the European Nucler Society (ENS) and the IAEA

International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)

HTR-2002, pp:1-5