Modularity of the MIT Pebble Bed Reactor for use by the commercial power industry

The Modular Pebble Bed Reactor is a small high temperature helium cooled reactor that is being considered for both electric power and hydrogen production. Pebble bed reactors are being developed in South Africa, China and the US. To make smaller 120 Mwe reactors economically competitive with larger 1500 Mwe traditional light water reactors changes in the way these plants are built are needed. Economies of production need to be sufficiently large to compete with economies of scale. MIT (Berte) has been working on developing a modular design and construction strategy for several years. This thesis builds on that work by demonstrating the technical feasibility of implementing the modularity approaches previously developed. The MIT approach uses "space frames" containing all the components, piping, valves and needed cables, instrumentation in a specified volume. These space frames are built in a factory to assure high quality in manufacture. They are then shipped by train or truck to the site and assembled "lego" style. It is expected that with the improved quality in the factory setting, and rapid assembly at the site that the total time and cost of construction of the plant will be greatly reduced (Kadak). To make this process work, it is vitally important to assure that when the space frames and internal components are manufactured, they are done to rigid tolerances to assure line up when assembled in the field. By using many advanced three dimensional measurement technologies, including the use of digital photography, lasers, and photogrammetry, companies are now capable of fabricating pieces to extremely precise specifications at a relatively affordable cost. This thesis evaluates the feasibility of manufacture of space frames and internal components to the required tolerances, the accuracy control needed and how the plant can be assembled with details of each space frame interfaces.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Hanlon-Hyssong, Jaime E

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Andrew C. Kadak.

• Nuclear Science and 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/1721.1/44770

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/44770