Modularity in design of the MIT Pebble Bed Reactor

The future of new nuclear power plant construction will depend in large part on the ability of designers to reduce capital, operations, and maintenance costs. One of the methods proposed, is to enhance the modularity of the designs in which the basic plant is broken down into modules, each of which is built offsite at a "factory", transported to the plant site, and assembled into a working plant using a minimum amount of labor and tooling. The value of this approach is that it improves overall quality, reduces site field work and rework, and speeds the construction of the plant. This approach also takes advantage of economies of mass-production, rather than relying on economy of scale to reduce costs. The ability to remove and replace modules for repair and maintenance also leads to reduced costs and downtime. Past work at MIT has resulted in a reference design that takes into account modularity. Based on this reference cycle design, a detailed analysis and modularity design of a power producing plant was performed. This design takes into account the goals for the modularity and construction approach.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Berte, Marc Vincent, 1977-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Andrew C. Kadak.

• Nuclear Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33637

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33637