Best reactor for today

[Mbrooke]

What is the best reactor design for a new nuclear generating station? Roughly 10 1000MW reactors driving 10 250-300MW output synchronous generator. Relay logic / ease of control +. Ability to ride through daily peaks and troughs ++.

 

[casflo]

If you are talking about a reactor of 1000 Mw termal power, roughly 300 Mw electrical output, probably the best and more promising designs are the small modular reactors. Use Google to investigate the designs of this type of reactors.

 

[Mbrooke]

Any good links on the subject?

 

[I125-Engineer]

The problem with this is the "ride through daily peaks and troughs" part. I know of no reactor design that is particularly suited to this. In fact it is far from ideal for reactors to not operate at 100% full power. It can be done, but numerous compromises are made. It is hard enough to run a safety case at 100% full power so there are no safety case for any lower power state. My professors always said it wasn't a great idea to operate below full power. If I had to pick a design for variable power output, it would be a molten salt reactor. There could be various ways in order to vary reactor power in such a reactor quickly. Most importantly, xenon could be controlled quickly. The problem with molten salt is that it is so corrosive, we don't have the materials to build a reactor. The other part is the continuous online chemistry control that is demanded. It would be a lot of work to manage the chemistry and might end up with people being exposed to large amounts of radiation. Lots of problems to be dealt with.