Posted on 02/13/2016 8:53:18 AM PST by Titus-Maximus
In what would be a milestone for advanced nuclear power, China's Nuclear Engineering Construction Corporation plans to start up a high-temperature, gas-cooled pebble-bed nuclear plant next year in Shandong province, south of Beijing. The twin 105-megawatt reactors--so-called Generation IV reactors that would be immune to meltdown--would be the first of their type built at commercial scale in the world.
Construction of the plant is nearly complete, and the next 18 months will be spent installing the reactor components, running tests, and loading the fuel before the reactors go critical in November 2017, said Zhang Zuoyi, director of the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, a division of Tsinghua University that has developed the technology over the last decade and a half, in an interview at the institute's campus 30 miles south of Beijing. If it's successful, Shandong plant would generate a total of 210 megawatts and will be followed by a 600-megawatt facility in Jiangxi province. Beyond that, China plans to sell these reactors internationally; in January, Chinese president Xi Jinping signed an agreement with King Salman bin Abdulaziz to construct a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in Saudi Arabia.
"This technology is going to be on the world market within the next five years," Zhang predicts. "We are developing these reactors to belong to the world."
Pebble-bed reactors that use helium gas as the heat transfer medium and run at very high temperatures--up to 950 °C--have been in development for decades. The Chinese reactor is based on a design originally developed in Germany, and the German company SGL Group is supplying the billiard-ball-size graphite spheres that encase thousands of tiny "pebbles" of uranium fuel. Seven high-temperature gas-cooled reactors have been built, but only two units remain in operation, both relatively small: an experimental 10-megawatt pebble-bed reactor at the Tsinghua Institute campus, which reached full power in 2003, and a similar reactor in Japan.
Construction of the plant is nearly complete, and the next 18 months will be spent installing the reactor components, running tests, and loading the fuel before the reactors go critical in November 2017, said Zhang Zuoyi, director of the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, a division of Tsinghua University that has developed the technology over the last decade and a half, in an interview at the institute’s campus 30 miles south of Beijing. If it’s successful, Shandong plant would generate a total of 210 megawatts and will be followed by a 600-megawatt facility in Jiangxi province. Beyond that, China plans to sell these reactors internationally; in January, Chinese president Xi Jinping signed an agreement with King Salman bin Abdulaziz to construct a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in Saudi Arabia.
“This technology is going to be on the world market within the next five years,†Zhang predicts. “We are developing these reactors to belong to the world.â€
Pebble-bed reactors that use helium gas as the heat transfer medium and run at very high temperatures—up to 950 °C—have been in development for decades. The Chinese reactor is based on a design originally developed in Germany, and the German company SGL Group is supplying the billiard-ball-size graphite spheres that encase thousands of tiny “pebbles†of uranium fuel. Seven high-temperature gas-cooled reactors have been built, but only two units remain in operation, both relatively small: an experimental 10-megawatt pebble-bed reactor at the Tsinghua Institute campus, which reached full power in 2003, and a similar reactor in Japan.
Liquid Floride Thorium Reactors should have been our future.
You are correct and Thorium will eventually have a major role in our energy future. Thorium makes the most sense for smaller “community sized” electrical generation.
There are a myriad of technologies that exist now and in the future that will meet our energy needs if government, lobbyist (oil lamps anyone?), and the courts would get out of the way.
I applaud China for doing what we should have done a decade ago and it WILL benefit everyone.
Thread winner!
killed off by the greens
“I’ve been hoping that someone has been doing serious work on pebble bed reactors. They are the future of nuclear power. Until they are replaced by fusion reactors someday.”
Actually Liquid Fueled Reactors are probably the future of fission power, especially since the can use thorium as well as uranium.
Personally, I’m hoping LENR works out, that would be better than fusion.
LENR does sound promising.
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