CPE 449/6290 - Assignment 2 - Nuclear Reactor Design Brochure
The assignment is marked anonymously; please do not put your name on your submission, but please do ensure that your student registration number is on the front page of the document and also in the filename of your submission, which should be “(student registration number) – CPE449 or CPE6290”. Please include a very clear reference to a Yellow Sticker in the title and in the document (should this be required). Any submission not meeting these requirements will not be accepted for marking.
Key Information
. Reports must be typewritten and include a cover sheet.
. A short abstract/summary should precede the article.
. SI units must be used wherever possible.
. Literature citations in the text should be referenced according to the IEEE style of citation.
. The references section does not count towards the word limit.
https://librarydevelopment.group.shef.ac.uk/shef-only/referencing/engineering_ieee.html
Deadline: 11pm on 08/05/2024
Important Note: Before submitting your reports please check for plagiarism* using Turn-it-in Software (Seeyour Department Student Handbook for more information). You will be awarded a “zero” mark for plagiarised coursework.
*Please make sure that diagrams have a caption figure (including cited reference number) and that the use of the diagram is stated in the text [this is the same with tables].
Feedback: Final general feedback on coursework as well as provisional coursework marks will be put on Turn-it-in around the 29th May
Maximum Number of Words: 4000 (Strict) – You should try to be as concise as possible. This is designed to be read and understood by a government official and if you convey your message appropriately in 2000 words, you will not be marked down for this.
Total Assignment Marks Available = 100
Assignment
The Republic of the Union of Myanmar has contacted you with respect to designing a Generation III+ reactor for implementation in their country. Currently the country has a requirement of 4.8 GW which needs to be a stable baseload with a good capacity factor and minimal CO2 production. This power production can be provided by either small modular reactors or large scale nuclear power plant.
Myanmar is currently not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. This maybe a problem regarding which designs can be developed with respect to the reactor fuel, but it is expected that the country will be amenable to operating a fuel lease strategy to be able to run their reactors. The government is very resistant to having the Russian government bail them out by building and operating 4 VVER 1200MW reactors and want to develop their own nuclear infrastructure and possibly unique reactor design that sets them apart from the rest of the world.
Design a Gen III+ reactor from a selection of materials and determine the k∞ for your selected reactor and fuel composition. Some components you may need to calculate lethargy values for and adapt the resonance escape probability equation. Once you have determined the k∞ use this to calculate the geometric Buckling constant Bg and the dimension of the reactor above which the reactor will be critical. Most thermal nuclear reactors operate with a keff around 1.4-1.6 and then use control rods, chemicalshim or burnable poisons to bring the multiplicity factor closer to 1.
Using the reactor power (MeV·s-1), the average energy released per fission (Ef = 200-202 MeV), reactor volume (V), and the fuel density cross section (Σf) an approximate neutron flux can be estimated*.
*this also means from a literature-based flux you can calculate what the reactor volume needs to be to attain a particular power.
Considering the reactor components and the size of the reactor your design should not appear that much different from conventional Gen II to Gen IV reactors. There were also previous experimental reactor designs that were developed, such as the organic cooled reactor (OCR) and the molten salt reactor (MSR). You also have a choice between using heat exchangers or having the coolant be the working fluid in your design (PWR vs BWR).