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<strong>atw</strong> Vol. 63 (<strong>2018</strong>) | Issue 2 ı February<br />
ENERGY POLICY, ECONOMY AND LAW 82<br />
reactor core. It is used to support the reactor core and<br />
locate the reactor core components. On June 8, 2017, the<br />
installation of the ceramic components inside the second<br />
reactor core was finished, which means half of the<br />
installation progress of the main facilities in the nuclear<br />
island has been done. Before August 11, 2017, the fuel<br />
production line has produced 250,000 pebbles, which met<br />
the requirement of connecting to the grid for HTR-PM.<br />
The project is planned to be completed and put into operation<br />
at the end of 2017/beginning of <strong>2018</strong>, but probably<br />
it will be delayed (Figure 3). The design lifetime of<br />
HTR-PM is 40 years.<br />
| | Fig. 3.<br />
The construction of Shidao Bay HTGR conventional island was finished<br />
on June 27, 2015 (photo credits: Shidao Bay NPP).<br />
3 Safety features of HTGR<br />
One of the most important safety issues for nuclear power<br />
plant is decay heat removal. In the Three Mile Island and<br />
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accidents, the reactor cores are<br />
overheated and melt down due to the failure of decay heat<br />
removal. In Chernobyl accident, the failure of decay heat<br />
removal system caused the resulting sequences after the<br />
initial exploration due to the fission power increment.<br />
So developing a highly reliable emergency core cooling<br />
system with reliable water and electricity supply is very<br />
important for a light water reactor (LWR).<br />
But for HTGR, inherent safety can be achieved based<br />
on three physical ideas: 1. using silicon carbide (SiC),<br />
which has very good heat-resistance, as the fuel cladding;<br />
2. lowering the volumetric power density of the reactor<br />
core significantly; 3. using identical small reactor modules<br />
to replace a large reactor in order to make sure that the<br />
reactor core won’t be heated to the temperature limit [7].<br />
Besides physical ideas, the safety of HTGR can be<br />
protected from three engineering designs:<br />
1. Multiple barriers to prevent the release of<br />
radioactivity<br />
The HTGR has three safety barriers to prevent the release<br />
of radioactivity. The first barrier is the fuel particles coated<br />
with SiC. The maximum temperature of the fuel particles<br />
is designed to be limited to 1,600 °C under any operation<br />
or accident conditions. Less than 1,600 °C, the coat of the<br />
particles can maintain integrated [8]. The second barrier<br />
is the pressure boundary of the primary circuit, which<br />
contains the reactor pressure vessel, the steam generator<br />
pressure vessel and the hot gas duct pressure vessel which<br />
connects the previous two vessels. The likelihood for<br />
these three vessels to have ruptures can be neglected. The<br />
third barrier is the bounding volume, which contains the<br />
primary circuit cabin, Helium purification cabin as well as<br />
fuel loading and unloading cabin. They can prevent the<br />
radioactive gas to be released into the atmosphere.<br />
2 Passive decay heat removal system<br />
The thermal design of HTGR has already considered that<br />
in case of any accidents, the cooling of the reactor core<br />
doesn’t need any active decay heat removal system. The<br />
decay heat in the reactor core can be removed from the<br />
core to the surface cooler outside of the reactor pressure<br />
vessel passively through heat conduction and radiation.<br />
Then the heat can be passed to the atmosphere from the<br />
surface cooler by nature convection. If the primary circuit<br />
lost pressure and the main and the auxiliary decay heat<br />
removal system are out of work, the decay heat can still be<br />
removed from the core to the outside. The reactor core<br />
meltdown can be avoided. Under accident conditions,<br />
because the decay heat cannot be removed by the main<br />
decay heat removal system, the temperature of the pebbles<br />
will be increased. In order to make sure the maximum<br />
temperature of the pebbles will not exceed 1,600 °C, some<br />
restrictions to the power density and geometry of the<br />
reactor core are necessary. That’s the reason why the<br />
capacity of the HTGR is usually small.<br />
3 Negative temperature coefficient has good reactivity<br />
compensation<br />
The reactor has a relatively high negative temperature<br />
coefficient for the fuel and moderator and if it is under<br />
normal condition, the margin between the maximum<br />
temperature of the pebbles and its limit is large. The<br />
negative temperature coefficient can give a good reactivity<br />
compensation. When a positive reactivity is introduced<br />
into the reactor, it can be automatically shut down thanks<br />
to the reactivity compensation from the negative temperature<br />
coefficient [9].<br />
The long term operation of HTR-10 and different<br />
safety experiments have proved the inherent safety of<br />
HTGR, which improved the public acceptance of nuclear<br />
reactors.<br />
4 Fuel technology<br />
In 2005, INET built a prototyping fuel-production facility<br />
with a capacity of 100,000 fuel elements per year. In order<br />
to solidify the fabrication level, INET started to construct<br />
HTGR fuel-production factory in Baotou, Northern China<br />
in 2013. The fuel-production equipment was installed in<br />
2014. In 2015, they started the commissioning and trial<br />
production. Some experiments have been done in Petten,<br />
the Netherlands. The irradiation test of five fuel spheres of<br />
the HTR-PM started in October 2012 in the high flux<br />
reactor (HFR) and finished on December 30, 2014. The<br />
fuel sphere quality, which is one of the key technologies in<br />
HTR-PM project, has been proved to meet the requirements<br />
[7].<br />
On August 15, 2016, the construction of the fuel<br />
production line in Baotou was finished and the fuel pebble<br />
production started. By July 17, 2017, the fuel production<br />
line has already produced 200,000 pebbles. It means<br />
that the fuel production of HTGR has shifted from trial<br />
production to industrial production. It also means that the<br />
fuel production technology of HTGR in China is leading<br />
the world, which has great significance for achieving<br />
commercialization and export of HTGR [10].<br />
When a fuel element is discharged from the bottom<br />
of the RPV to the fuel handling system, its burn-up is<br />
measured immediately. If its burn-up does not reach the<br />
design burn-up limit, it will be recharged into the reactor<br />
Energy Policy, Economy and Law<br />
Development of High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor in China ı Wentao Guo and Michael Schorer