Fast Reactors and Accelerator Driven Systems Knowledge Base

Conference Article: A multi-purpose reactor

Changwen Ma (Institute of Nuclear Energy Technology, Tsinghua University Beijing, Beijing (China))

Abstract

A integrated Natural circulation self pressurized reactor can be used for sea water desalination, electroqeneration, ship propulsion and district or process heating. The reactor can be used for ship propulsion because it has following advantages: It is a integrated reactor. Whole primary loop is included in a size limited pressure vessel. For a 200MW reactor the diameter of the pressure vessel is about 5m. It is convenient to arranged on a ship; Hydraulic driving facility of control rods is used on the reactor. It notably decreases the height of the reactor. For ship propulsion, smaller diameter and smaller height are important. Besides these, the operation reliability of the reactor is enough high, because there is no rotational machine (for example, circulating pump) in safety systems. Reactor systems are simple. There are no emergency water injection system and boron concentration regulating system. These features for ship propulsion reactor are valuable. Design of the reactor is on the base of existed demonstration district heating reactor design. The mechanic design principles are the same. But boiling is introduced in the reactor core. Several variants to use the reactor as a movable seawatwer desalination plant are presented in the paper. When the sea water desalination plant is working to produce fresh water, the reactor can supply electricity at the same time to the local electricity network. Some analyses for comprehensive application of the reactor have been done. Main features and parameters of the small (Thermopower 2OOMW) reactor are given in the paper.

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key words: desalination reactors; district heating; dual-purpose power plants; engineered safety systems; pressure vessels; primary coolant circuits; pwr type reactors; reactor control systems; scram
Reference:
Advisory group meeting on small power and heat generation systems on the basis of propulsion and innovative reactor technologies. Obninsk (Russian Federation) 20-24 Jul 1998
International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)
IAEA-TECDOC--1172, pp:28-34