Very high-temperature reactor

Benefits, Drawbacks, and Future Trends of Brayton Helium Gas Turbine Cycles for Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor and Very-High Temperature Reactor Generation IV Nuclear Power Plants

“…Today, Asia pioneers the latest VHTR designs; the High-Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) in Japan and the High-Temperature Test reactor (HTR-10) in China. Although the COT of the HTR-10 (~700°C) is not the same as the HTTR (950°C), it shares the design and passive safe philosophies of the VHTR objective [18]. The VHTR is a near-term deployment and suitable for electricity generation as well as hydrogen production due to the high temperature COT and is able to accommodate other service such as seawater desalination.…”

“…The prismatic core gives a modularity advantage in design. It has the benefit of being able to optimize the number of enrichments in the core, which will minimise the power peaking and peak fuel temperature throughout the core burnup period [18]. The pebble bed core has the fuel in the form of pebbles, stacked together.…”

“…Current economic studies as documented in [24] concluded that there was no real economic advantage of COTs in excess of 1000°C for electricity generation alone. According to [18], industries that would benefit from COTs in excess of 1000°C included iron and steel production, which will eliminate the need to improve the recuperator design. Future economic studies would need to consider the overall price ($/MWh) of higher nuclear heat generation for this purpose.…”

Review of the experimental research on the thermal‐hydraulic characteristics in the pebble bed nuclear reactor core and fusion breeder blankets

“…The temperature limit of such pebble fuels can be over 1600°C, leaving large safety margin for the reactors under design basis accident (DBA) 10,11 . In addition, the reactor output temperatures of the HTGRs (750°C‐950°C), and FHRs (700°C) can be much higher than those of the Pressurized Water‐cooled Reactors (PWRs, 325°C) 1,5,7,10,12 . Based on such pebble‐bed‐type nuclear reactors, the nuclear energy can be extended to provide an environmentally friendly solution to the hydrogen production, except for the traditional electricity generation 13 .…”