Design of small Reduced-Moderation Water Reactor (RMWR) with natural circulation cooling

Okubo, Tsutomu; Suzuki, Motoe; Iwamura, Takamichi; Takeda, Renzo*; Moriya, Kumiaki*; Kanno, Minoru*

A small scale around 300 MWe reduced-moderation water reactor (RMWR) concept has been developed. For the core, a BWR type core concept with the tight-lattice fuel rod arrangement and the high void fraction is adopted to attain a high conversion ratio over 1.0. The negative void reactivity coefficients are also required, and the very flat short core concept is adopted to make the natural circulation cooling (NC) possible. The core burn-up of 60 GWd/t and the operation cycle of 24 months are also attained. For the system, simplification of the system with the passive safety features is a basic approach to overcome the scale demerit as well as the NC. For example, the HPCF system is replaced with the passive accumulator system resulting in the expensive emergency DGs reduction. The cost evaluation for concerned NSSS components gives about 20% reduction. Since MOX fuels in the RMWR contains Pu around 30 wt% and is irradiated to a high burn-up, the fuel safety evaluation has been performed and the acceptable results have been obtained from the thermal feasibility point of view.