Reducing the Overnight Capital Cost of Advanced Reactors Using Equipment-Level Seismic Protective Systems

Technical Report · Fri Sep 30 04:00:00 EDT 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1896346· OSTI ID:1896346

Whittaker, Andrew Stuart ^[1]

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1. Univ. at Buffalo, NY (United States); University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Consideration of the effects of earthquake shaking on the design and construction of nuclear power plants adds substantially to the overnight capital cost, with anecdotal estimates as high as 35+%, attributed to additional construction materials, need for one-off and sub-optimal designs of equipment due to conflicting design choices, the high cost of seismic qualification of equipment, and regulatory review. Safety-critical equipment in large light water reactors is designed and qualified for seismic demands imposed by the supporting reactor building, optimal mechanical designs are not possible, and designs of a given piece of equipment may vary with height above grade. Similar negative impacts are expected for advanced reactors unless the seismic design paradigm is changed. The overarching goal of this transformational MEITNER project, which involved a multidisciplinary engineering team and designers of three fundamentally different advanced reactors, was to adapt proven seismic isolation and damping technologies to operationalize modular protective systems for safety-class equipment inside advanced reactor buildings. Such seismic protective systems would be tightly integrated into design development for reactor support systems and balance-of-plant construction. The adoption of the technology, which is widely used in non-nuclear sectors, would simplify plant design, enable the use of standardized equipment and buildings, optimized for operational performance, and reduce plant size and weight. The need for site-specific equipment would be eliminated, enabling identical equipment to be used across multiple plants sited across the US and economies of scale, and catalyzing new interest and investment. The equipment-based protective systems would allow siting of advanced reactors in regions of high seismic hazard.

• Research Organization: Univ. at Buffalo, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
• Contributing Organization: Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT); Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI); Simpson, Gumpertz, and Heger (SGH); Exponent; TerraPower; X-energy; Kairos Power; Idaho National Laboratory (INL); LucidCatalyst
• DOE Contract Number: AR0000978
• OSTI ID: 1896346
• Report Number(s): DOE-UB--00978
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
advanced reactors
capital cost
seismic isolation