A review of existing SuperCritical Water reactor concepts, safety analysis codes and safety characteristics. (November 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wu, Pan; Ren, Yanhao; Feng, Min; Shan, Jianqiang; Huang, Yanping; Yang, Wen
• Is Part Of: Progress in nuclear energy. Volume 153(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-11
• Subjects: Supercritical water reactor -- Safety performance -- System code development; Nuclear energy -- Periodicals; Nuclear engineering -- Periodicals; 333.7924
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pnucene.2022.104409
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0149-1970

Abstract

Abstract: SuperCritical Water Reactor(SCWR) applies water beyond the thermodynamic critical point as the coolant, which aims to achieve high efficiency around 45% compared to 33% for existing commercial light water reactors. In order to raise the reactor operating temperature and reactor criticality, the existing SCWR core designs are quite different from those of boiling water reactors or pressurized water reactors, which further effect their safety performance and safety system design. A comprehensive review on existing developed SCWR reactor concepts of different countries, including pressure-vessel type and pressure-tube type SCWRs, as well as thermal, fast and mixed spectrum SCWRs, is carried out to deeply explain the core design features of SCWR. The development methods of safety analysis tool for SCWR are also summarized to shed a light on the key scientific difficulties and how these problems are solved up to now. All the special techniques applied to enable trans-critical simulations are still unphysical and lack of validation. Moreover, the safety characteristics of existing SCWR concepts are discussed. Based on these review work and discussions, the research status of SCWR concepts, safety analysis tool development and safety characteristics are clearly presented. Safety analysis tool validations and more comprehensive accident evaluations should be further carried out to better illustrate the safety performance of these SCWR concepts.