A concept design of supercritical CO₂cooled SMR operating at isolated microgrid region

Abstract

Summary Most of the small modular reactor (SMR) concepts developed in the past have compact size and a longer life reactor core than the conventional nuclear power plants. However, these concepts have not achieved the full modularization including power conversion system. This study suggests an innovative concept of a reactor cooled by supercritical state carbon dioxide (S‐CO2). A reactor core with uranium carbide fuel controlled by drum type control rods was designed. The core has long life (20 years) without refueling or reshuffling as well as inherent safety features. The reactor can be used as a distributed power source and replace outdated fossil fuel power plants for small cities. Moreover, the authors propose the S‐CO2 Brayton cycle as a power conversion system to achieve compact and lightweight module. Because of compact core and power conversion system, the entire system can be contained in a single module. The target of the system is to be able to transport a single core and power conversion system module via ground transportation. In order to meet this target, single module's total weight is minimized in the order of 100 tons. The external size of a module is less than 7 m in length and 4 m in diameter. It produces 12MWe electricity from 36MWt reactor core. The S‐CO2 Brayton cycle was optimized, and the cycle components such as turbomachineries and heat exchangers were designed preliminarily to observe the potential to maximize the performance while minimizing the weight. Moreover, a dry air‐cooling option to reject waste heat for inland installation was selected for the suggested nuclear system. A concept of passive decay heat removal system was developed, and its performance was examined to determine the required heat removal capacity of the system to assure the system's safety under various anticipated accidents. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Radionuclide transport in a long‐term operation supercritical CO 2 ‐cooled direct‐cycle small nuclear reactor

“…Schematic figure of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Micro Modular Reactor (KAIST‐MMR)…”

“…KAIST-MMR is a conceptual small modular nuclear power plant that integrated with S-CO 2 -cooled fast reactor core and S-CO 2 simple recuperated power conversion system together. 28 To enhance the existing advantages of SMR such as low construction cost and easy site selection, the whole size of the KAIST-MMR is selected to be transportable by land or maritime transportation. The compact size of KAIST-MMR can be achieved by eliminating the IHX between the reactor core and the power conversion cycle.…”

“…Science and Technology Micro Modular Reactor (KAIST-MMR) 28 [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]…”

Design and thermodynamic analysis of supercriticalCO2reheating recompression Brayton cycle coupled with lead‐based reactor

“…Although some concept designs of the nuclear power generation systems utilized the S‐CO 2 power cycle, there are few studies on the coupling system of the pool‐type liquid metal cooled fast reactor and the S‐CO 2 cycle. Moisseytsev and Sienicki compared different layouts for the S‐CO 2 cycle coupled to the sodium‐cooled fast reactor.…”

“…16,17 To further improve the cycle performance, the following investigations were conducted by the researchers: (a) comparing cycle layouts, such as the recompression cycle, the intercooling cycle, and the precompression cycle 10,18 ; (b) adopting the combined cycle and increase the bottom cycle, such as the Rankine cycle and the transcritical CO 2 cycle 19,20 ; (c) adding other gases to S-CO 2 to improve the physical properties of the working fluids 21 ; (d) reheating the working fluid to increase the turbine power. 10,22,23 Although some concept designs of the nuclear power generation systems utilized the S-CO 2 power cycle, [24][25][26] there are few studies on the coupling system of the pool-type liquid metal cooled fast reactor and the S-CO 2 cycle. Moisseytsev and Sienicki 22 compared different layouts for the S-CO 2 cycle coupled to the sodium-cooled fast reactor.…”