The importance of the AVR pebble-bed reactor for the future of nuclear power
Conference
·
OSTI ID:22039673
- Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor AVR GmbH, Postfach 1160, 52412 Juelich (Germany)
The AVR pebble-bed high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) at Juelich (Germany)) operated from 1967 to 1988 and was certainly the most important HTGR project of the past. The reactor was the mass test bed for all development steps of HTGR pebble fuel. Some early fuel charges failed under high temperature conditions and contaminated the reactor. An accurate pebble measurement (Cs 137) allowed to clean the core from unwanted pebbles after 1981. The coolant activity went down and remained very low for the remaining reactor operation. A melt-wire experiment in 1986 revealed max. coolant temperatures of >1280 deg. C and fuel temperatures of >1350 deg. C, explained by under-estimated bypasses. The fuel still in the core achieved high burn-ups and showed under the extreme temperature conditions excellent fission product retention. Thus, the AVR operation qualified the HTGR fuel, and an average discharge burn-up of 112% fifa revealed an excellent fuel economy of the pebble-bed reactor. Furthermore, the AVR operation offers many meaningful data for code-to-experiment comparisons. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22039673
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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