Pellet bed reactor concepts for nuclear propulsion applications

Abstract

Pellet bed reactor (PeBR) concepts have been developed for nuclear thermal and nuclear electric propulsion, and bimodal applications. This annular core, fast spectrum reactor offers many desirable design and safety features. These features include high-power density, small reactor size, full retention of fission products, passive decay heat removal, redundancy in reactor control, negative temperature reactivity feedback, ground testing of the fully assembled reactor using electric heating and non-nuclear fuel elements, and the option of fueling on the launch pad, or fueling and refueling in orbit. In addition to these features, the concepts for nuclear electric propulsion and for bimodal power and thermal propulsion have no single point failure. The average power density in the reactor for nuclear thermal propulsion ranges from 2.2 to 3.3 MW/1 and for a 15-MWe nuclear electric propulsion system the total power system specific mass is about 3.3 kg/kWe. The bimodal-PeBR system concepts offer specific impulse in excess of 650s, tens of Newtons of thrust, and total system specific power ranging from 11 to 21.9 We/kg at the 10-and 40-kWe levels, respectively.