Science and Technology of Supercritical Water Cooled Reactors: Review and Status

Abstract

An overview of the global development of Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactors (SCWRs) has been given. The SCWR concept is the natural design path and ultimate evolution of conventional reactors today as the vast majority of modern power nuclear reactors are water cooled units. The move from subcritical to supercritical pressures by the thermal power industry over the past 50 years has been successful. The SCWR concept follows two main types of large reactor vessel as found in conventional Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWR); and distributed pressure tubes as found in Canadian and Russian nuclear reactor designs. The concept has been designed to operate with a thermal spectrum core, fast spectrum core or mixed spectrum core. SCWRs promise to increase the efficiency of modern nuclear power plants from 30 - 35% to about 40 - 45% and reduce capital and operational costs. Most of the SCWR designs are still at the conceptual stage and are not expected to be implemented till 2030 because of the challenges faced in thermal-hydraulics and construction materials chemistry that would withstand supercritical conditions.

Keywords: SCWR, PWR, BWR, thermal spectrum, fast spectrum, mixed spectrum, capital and operational costs.