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Operational Aspects

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Modular High-temperature Gas-cooled Reactor Power Plant

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Abstract

Conditions of plant operation like availabilities, load conditions, or aspects related to the fuel and fuel cycle are explained. Radiation exposures during operation are compared to those which are existing in any case for the population, and it is shown that nuclear power plants contribute to a very small share to the total values (e.g., less than 0.5% in Germany). Related to the time-dependent evaluation of operation of nuclear reactors, one has to distinct between long-term effects (burnup of fuel), midterm effects (e.g., Xenon effects), and short-term effects (accidents). The burnup of fuel is a suited measure to calculate the release of energy from the fuel elements. In HTR fuel burnup values of more than 100,000 MWd/t can be realized without any difficulty because of the use of coated particles. During the reactor operation higher isotopes like Plutonium and minor actinides are formed. Partly they are fissioned already during operation. The rest, contained in spent fuel elements, has a large importance for the evaluation of process of direct final storage of spent fuel elements. The fission product inventory, formed during operation, and the radioactivity of the isotopes forms the most important question of reactor safety. The retention of fission products in the coated particle fuel is very effective, as well during reactor operation, during accidents, and in the steps of waste management. The system of dynamical equations, which is given in this chapter in simplified form for the core and for the whole plant, allows a description of the processes of operation and control of the chain reaction. Simplified solutions shall explain important topics like changes of temperatures and isotopes in the reactor. Mainly, the isotopes Xenon and Samarium need special attention in the connection. The Xenon dynamic requires special additional contributions in the control system, and even oscillations of neutron fluxed can be caused by changes of this strongly absorbing fission product. Multi-dimensional computer programs today are applied to cover all these effects mentioned before. The decay heat removal in normal operation is carried out by production loops or auxiliary loops. In case of failure of these systems, the self-acting decay heat removal takes place. This is one of the important safety aspects of modular HTR. The inert thermal behavior of the core, caused by small power density and large mass of graphite, is one of the preconditions to realize the special safety characteristics. Some numbers on release rates of radioactivity during operation are given, and it is indicated that the dose rate applied to personal is relatively small in HTR plants. The different processes of waste management are explained in a short overview. They are based on the developed methods applied in today introduced reactors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Reactor Safety and Reactor, RWTH Aachen University, Jülich, Germany

    Kurt Kugeler

  2. Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Tech, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Zuoyi Zhang

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  1. Kurt Kugeler
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  2. Zuoyi Zhang
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Correspondence to Kurt Kugeler .

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Kugeler, K., Zhang, Z. (2019). Operational Aspects. In: Modular High-temperature Gas-cooled Reactor Power Plant. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-57712-7_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-57712-7_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-57710-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-57712-7

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