Deliberately small reactors and the second nuclear era

Ingersoll, D.T.

doi:10.1016/j.pnucene.2009.01.003

Cited by 199 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Ingersoll [10] provides a good summary of the innovative feature of these; "reactor designs that are deliberately small, i.e. designs that do not scale to large sizes but rather capitalize on their smallness to achieve specific performance characteristics.…”

Section: Why Smrsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small modular reactors: A comprehensive overview of their economics and strategic aspects

Locatelli

Bingham

Mancini

2014

Progress in Nuclear Energy

174

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A key challenge for engineers and scientists over the coming decades is to develop and deploy power plants with sufficient capacity and flexibility to meet the growing demand for energy (mainly electrical) whilst simultaneously reducing emissions (primarily greenhouse gases). With fusion-based power plants not currently being considered viable for large-scale deployment for at least 40 years, other technologies must to be considered. Renewable and high efficiency combined gas-fired plants, along with nuclear solutions, are regarded as the most suitable candidates, with Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) developing as a favoured choice. However, two main impediments to the current deployment of SMRs exist: (1) safety concerns, particularly following the Fukushima accident, and (2) their economic models, with high capital costs only being available through a limited number of investors. The goal of this paper is to provide a review and a holistic assessment of this class of nuclear reactor, with specific focus on the most common technology: the Light Water Reactor (LWR). In particular, the paper provides a state-of-the-art assessment of their life cycle, along with a comparison of their relative merits with other base-load technologies. It is shown that SMRs are a suitable choice when the power to be installed is in the range 1-3 GWe and the social aspects of the investment, such as the creation of new employment positions, is a goal of policy makers. The paper thereby provides governments and stakeholders with key economic and social boundaries for the viable deployment of SMRs.

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Section: Why Smrsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small modular reactors: A comprehensive overview of their economics and strategic aspects

Locatelli

Bingham

Mancini

2014

Progress in Nuclear Energy

174

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“…These small reactors are believed to fill a gap in the energy market as they may be constructed in a short time, can work on less developed energy grids and do not require the considerable upfront capital costs associated with currently operated large NPPs (nuclear power plants) that make purchasing them economically challenging for most countries [103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116]. Small modular reactors caused a similar euphoria in the 1960s and again in the 1980s that did not materialize due to the smaller reactors overall less favorable economic performance when compared to large (>1000 MWe) nuclear power plants (NPPs) [117,118] or other energy generating technology.…”

Section: Identified Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Sustainability and Progress of Energy Neutral Mineral Processing

et al. 2018

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A number of primary ores such as phosphate rock, gold-, copper-and rare earth ores contain considerable amounts of accompanying uranium and other critical materials. Energy neutral mineral processing is the extraction of unconventional uranium during primary ore processing to use it, after enrichment and fuel production, to generate greenhouse gas lean energy in a nuclear reactor. Energy neutrality is reached if the energy produced from the extracted uranium is equal to or larger than the energy required for primary ore processing, uranium extraction, -conversion, -enrichment and -fuel production. This work discusses the sustainability of energy neutral mineral processing and provides an overview of the current progress of a multinational research project on that topic conducted under the umbrella of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

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“…Small modular reactors (SMRs) are those nuclear fission reactors with electrical output powers of less than 300 MWe. Due to the low power density and large heat capacity, some SMRs have inherent safety features which are the most advanced feature of these SMR-based plants relative to those conventional nuclear plants and protect these SMRs from the hazards of core-melting, radiological release and Loss of Coolant Accidents (LOCAs) [1,2]. SMRs can offer simpler, safer and standardized modular design by factory-building, smaller initial capital investment, and shorter construction period, and have been viewed by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a developing trend in nuclear energy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Saturated Adaptive Output-Feedback Power-Level Control for Modular High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors

Dong

2014

Energies

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Small modular reactors (SMRs) are those nuclear fission reactors with electrical output powers of less than 300 MWe. Due to its inherent safety features, the modular high temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR) has been seen as one of the best candidates for building SMR-based nuclear plants with high safety-level and economical competitive power. Power-level control is crucial in providing grid-appropriation for all types of SMRs. Usually, there exists nonlinearity, parameter uncertainty and control input saturation in the SMR-based plant dynamics. Motivated by this, a novel saturated adaptive output-feedback power-level control of the MHTGR is proposed in this paper. This newly-built control law has the virtues of having relatively neat form, of being strong adaptive to parameter uncertainty and of being able to compensate control input saturation, which are given by constructing Lyapunov functions based upon the shifted-ectropies of neutron kinetics and reactor thermal-hydraulics, giving an online tuning algorithm for the controller parameters and proposing a control input saturation compensator respectively. It is proved theoretically that input-to-state stability (ISS) can be guaranteed for the corresponding closed-loop system. In order to verify the theoretical results, this new control strategy is then applied to the large-range power maneuvering control for the MHTGR of the HTR-PM plant. Numerical simulation results show not only the relationship between regulating performance and control input saturation bound but also the feasibility of applying this saturated adaptive control law practically. OPEN ACCESSEnergies 2014, 7 7621

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Deliberately small reactors and the second nuclear era

Cited by 199 publications

References 3 publications

Small modular reactors: A comprehensive overview of their economics and strategic aspects

Small modular reactors: A comprehensive overview of their economics and strategic aspects

On the Sustainability and Progress of Energy Neutral Mineral Processing

Saturated Adaptive Output-Feedback Power-Level Control for Modular High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors

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