Nuclear, Thermal and Hydraulic Design for Gas Turbine High Temperature Reactor (GTHTR300)

Abstract

Design study of a Gas Turbine High Temperature Reactor with electric power of approximately 300MW (GTHTR300) has progressed in Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. The GTHTR300 is a simplified and economical power plant with a high level of safety characteristics and a high plant efficiency of approximately 46%.The nuclear, thermal and hydraulic design of the GTHTR300 is worked out under many kinds of limitations from economical and safety requirements. By applying an innovative refueling scheme using a sandwich shuffling method and longer effective burnable poisons, economical requirements of long refueling interval of two years in order to establish a high availability factor of over 90%, a high average fuel burn-up of 120GWd/t, and so on, were attained. Also a newly arranged control rod insertion scheme was adopted in order to meet the safety requirements, such as, a low control rod ejection worth of less than 0.2%Δk, the power density of less than 13W/cm3 and the maximum fuel temperature of lower than 1, 400°C. It was clarified by this study that the design to meet the economical and safety requirements is attainable.In this paper, the nuclear, thermal and hydraulic design features of GTHTR300 are described.