HTGR Knowledge Base

Conference Article: MIT Modular Pebble Bed Reactor (MPBR)

Andrew C. Kadak, Ronald G. Ballinger, Institute of Technology, Massachusetts, USA

Abstract

The modular pebble bed reactor project at MIT was initiated in 1998 as part of an effort to re-invigorate thinking about how to improve the overall safety of nuclear plants, making the plants less complex and competitive with fossil fueled plants. Since that time, numerous studies, designs, experiments and analyses have been conducted leading to a conceptual design that addressed some of the fundamental issues regarding the introduction of new nuclear plants. This paper will summarize the progress to date and the current status of the plant design and supporting analyses. Topics that will be summarized include the basic design of the plant, reasons for the design, fuel performance modeling and optimization, silver release, balance of plant design, intermediate heat exchanger design, accident analyses including air ingress, waste disposal, safeguards and non-proliferation, modularity, pebble flow experiments, core physics analysis and benchmarking, core power distribution monitoring and licensing by test. This paper will provide an overview of the entire project.

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key words: Gas Cooled Reactor, Nuclear Technology
Reference:
Proceedings of the Conference on High Temperature Reactors, Beijing, China, September, 22-24, 2004
International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)
HTR-2004, pp:1-1