Possible design improvements and a high power density fuel design for integral type small modular pressurized water reactors Original Research Article

The study evaluates potential weaknesses and possible improvements for integral type small modular pressurized water reactor designs. By taking International Reactor Innovative and Secure (IRIS) as the reference design and keeping the power output as the same, a new fuel and reactor design were proposed. The proposed design relocates the primary coolant pumps and the pressurizer outside the reactor pressure vessel (RPV). Three recirculation lines and jet pumps/centrifugal pumps are introduced to provide the coolant circulation similar to Boiling Water Reactor designs. The pressurizer component is expected to be similar to the AP600 design. It is located at one of the recirculation lines. The new fuel assembly adopts 264 solid cylindrical fuel pins with 10 mm diameter and 2.3 m height, arranged at a hexagonal tight lattice configuration. Large water rods are introduced to preserve the moderating power and to accommodate finger type control rods. The resulting fuel can operate with 104.5 kW/l power density while having substantially higher margin for boiling crisis compared to typical large PWRs. Full core neutronic analysis shows that 24-month cycle length and 50 MWd/kg burnup is achievable with a two-batch refueling scheme. Furthermore, the fuel behavior study shows that the new fuel with M5 type Zircaloy cladding show fairly acceptable steady state performance. A preliminary Loss of Coolant analysis shows that the new design could be advantageous over IRIS due to its low ratio of the water inventory below the top of the active fuel to total RPV water inventory. The proposed reactor pressure vessel height and the containment volume are 30% lower than the reference IRIS design.