A significant amount of interest has been
aroused recently concerning the advancement of the
current pressurized water reactor core designs with
a special emphasis towards improving the conversion
characteristics of these reactors. Most reports
have been divided into two camps; those that deal
with the neutronic aspects and those that...
The Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) design was one of six designs chosen
for development under the Generation IV initiative. Thermal mixing of the coolant at
the exit of the reactor has been a common concern for VHTR reactor designs.
Thermal mixing processes are commonly investigated through the use of...
The United States nuclear industry is under
significant public pressure to close the nuclear fuel
cycle. Closing the fuel cycle will require that nuclear
waste, fission products and transuranics, except plutonium
(actinides), be disposed of by permanent burial. The
actinides can be buried with the fission products, but this
will...
Preliminary nuclear design studies have been completed on ten
configurations of nuclear reactors for low power (1-30 kWe) space
applications utilizing thermionic energy conversion. Additional design
studies have been conducted on the TRICE multimegawatt in-core
thermionic reactor configuration. In each of the cases, a reactor
configuration has been determined which...
Some of the next generation of small modular reactors have been designed with helically coiled steam generators integrated into the reactor vessel to enhance natural circulation. According to the developers of TASS/SMR, a one-dimensional thermal hydraulic code written to model the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute's SMART reactor, the Žukauskas...
Nodal methods which are used to calculate reactor transients, control rod patterns, and fuel pin powers are investigated. The 3-D nodal code, STORM, has been modified to perform these calculations. Several numerical examples lead to the following conclusions: (1) By employing a thermal leakage-to-absorption ratio11 (TLAR) approximation for the spatial...
Incore thermionic space reactor design concepts which operate at a
nominal power output range of 20 to 50 kWe are described. Details of the
neutronic, thermionic, thermal hydraulics and shielding performance are
presented. Due to the strong absorption of thermal neutrons by natural
tungsten, and the large amount of that...
An overall systems design code was developed to model
an advanced in-core thermionic energy conversion based
nuclear reactor system for space applications at power
levels of 10 to 50 kWe. The purpose of this work was to
provide the overall shell for the systems code and to also
provide the...
An enabling technology for long duration, deep space missions is the availability of a high power, long-lived power supply. The goal of this work is the design of a self-regulating deep space nuclear reactor. The design objectives are to produce 250 kWth for a 25-year period using the presence of...
In order to address the energy needs of developing countries and remote communities, Oregon State University has proposed the Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor (MASLWR) design. In order to achieve five years of operation without refueling, use of 8% enriched fuel is necessary.
This dissertation is focused on core design...