Pre-Conceptual Design of the Research High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor TeResa for Non-Electrical Applications

Abstract

In line with Polish national activities and research programs investigating non-electrical-reactor use, the national GOSPOSTRATEG-HTR project was launched, aiming at the development of a novel pre-conceptual design of a High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR). The 40 MWth research reactor would serve as a technology demonstrator for future industrial purposes. In the paper, the proposal of an established thermal-hydraulic and neutronic core design is presented as a result of the National Centre for Nuclear Research team studies, in the scope of the project, including the areas of fluid mechanics, heat exchange and reactor neutronic core design support analyses. The undertaken analyses were confirmed by the series of code investigations involving integral thermal-hydraulic (MELCOR (Sandia National Laboratories, USA), CATHARE (CEA, France)), neutronic (Serpent (VTT, Finland), MCB (AGH University's Department of Nuclear Energy, Poland)), Computational Fluid Dynamics (ANSYS Fluent (ANSYS, USA)) and others. The calculations performed within the preliminary safety analysis on the pre-concept showed its compliance with international safety standards for the normal operation and Design Basis Accident sequences.

Modelling Irradiation Effects in Metallic Materials Using the Crystal Plasticity Theory—A Review

“…Although presently built generation III/III+ NPPs are much improved as compared to previous projects, generation IV (Gen-IV) initiative calls for new nuclear energy systems that will significantly improve the safety and reliability, sustainability, useful reactor life, proliferation-resistance, and profitability [5]. Generation-IV International Forum (GIF) members identified six systems [6]: very high temperature gas-cooled reactors (VHTR) [7,8], gas-cooled fast reactors (GFR) [9], sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFR) [10,11], lead-cooled fast reactors (LFR) [12], molten salt reactors (MSR) [13], and super-critical water-cooled reactors (SCWR) [14]. However, the Gen-IV projects typically pose new material challenges.…”