| Nuclear power is flexible, reliable and has a negligible impact on global warming. It is a very attractive power generator, capable of meeting the energy needs of any urban centers and northern communities. A small nuclear power reactor, capable of meeting the heating and electrical energy requirements of a Canadian Forces Base (CFB) located in the Arctic, has been conceptually developed. The new reactor design, rated at 25 MWth, is based on the Near Boiling (NB) nuclear reactor concept, an inherently safe 1 MW th nuclear source. The reactor provides heat energy dedicated to building and domestic water heating and supplies electricity through an organic Rankine cycle energy conversion plant rated at 5 MWe. The optimized reactor core configuration, along with its intrinsic control system, allows for the power plant to operate safely from a typical central heating plant or the basement of a multi-level office building.;The design of the reactor is accomplished using the Los Alamos National Laboratories'MCNP 5 code and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's WIMS-AECL 3.1, in addition to specially written software for heat transfer calculations. The current design is still in its early stage and other areas of study should be investigated prior to implementation. These include assessing the new reactor's inherent safety through an appropriate kinetic model, fitting the new reactor with a shielding arrangement in according with current international and national regulations on radiation protection, exploring the effects of advanced fuels and varying the fuel enrichment throughout the core.;The reactor employs TRISO fuel particles, a commercially well developed fuel known for its excellent retention of fission products. The light water coolant remains unpressurized and below saturation temperature, exiting the reactor core at 95°C. Beryllium movable reflector plates assume short term burn-up control and prevent prompt critical state from being reached. Shut down, regulatory and long term reactivity control is achieved with 133 hafnium control rods subdivided into 5 distinctive banks. The reactor core has a life of approximately 12 years. With strong negative moderator temperature and void fraction coefficients, as well as with its negative fuel temperature coefficient, this new reactor design shows great potential for inherent safety. |
