Page 57 - July-August 2012
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Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2012
57
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NPJ Editorial
5/24/2012 4:20:15 PM
7.
Are you using risk-informed
evaluations for mPower for its licensing?
Yes, we’re pursuing a risk-informed
licensing process. We’re conducting our
own probabilistic risk assessment for
the B&W mPower reactor, and that has
helped to inform our design process and
guide the decisions that we’re going to
make in order to reach our safety target.
We are performing this assessment
primarily with internal resources and
using some contractors to support us.
This is an important part of reaching our
goal of 10
-8
core damage frequency.
8.
When did The Babcock & Wilcox
Company start pursuing mPower
actively?
We started to move on this about
four years ago, and the program publicly
launched in 2009.
9.
When did the original design of
mPower evolve?
The prototype was built in the 1960s
-- that’s really the first integral reactor
that we built for the merchant vessel
Otto Hahn. It was a commercial nuclear
ship built in the 1960s and operated for
about 10 years. Following that, we did
some design work over the decades with
Department of Energy studies. All of
these parts and pieces came together and
formed the basis for starting specific work
on the B&W mPower reactor program in
2008.
10.
Do the above-described applications
alleviate the need for a prototype of
mPower?
We’ve taken an approach in which we
don’t need to build a full-size prototype.
However, we do have a scaled test
facility in Bedford County, Virginia. It
is full fidelity, full height, and electrically
heated. Because natural circulation, which
is driven by gravity, is vital to the safety
performance of our design, the vertical
aspect can’t be scaled. However, volume
and power have been scaled to a smaller
size. For example, about two megawatts
of electrical heating are used to simulate
the energy from fuel.
The main purpose of the facility is to
validate the codes and methods that we
use to predict and model how the plant
will behave. The codes we use were
originally developed and validated for
large 1,000-megawatt class reactors with
distributed reactor system architectures.
Their direct applicability to an integral
reactor design cannot be taken as a given,
and to buy down our licensing risk with
the NRC, we’ve made the decision to go
forward with this test facility.
11.
Who are the other U.S. organizations,
U.S. as well as international, who are
collaborating with you in terms of
technology?
Bechtel is participating with us in
Generation mPower LLC and is designing
the turbine island andwill serve as the EPC
constructor for B&W mPower plants. We
also have some other companies we work
with. For example, SPX Corporation’s
Clyde Union division is working with us
on reactor cooling pumps. We’re working
with General Electric on the turbine
generator and Northrop Grumman for
instrumentation and controls.
