Gas Cooled Reactors: Magnox, AGR and HTGR

Gas Cooled Reactors
Magnox, AGR and HTGR

Section I
MAGNOX REACTOR
Magnox NPP
Magnox - cooling system
Magnox Cont.
 Graphite moderated , Carbon dioxide coolant
 At a temperature of about 680°C increasing
disintegration of CO2+C to 2CO, prevention by CO2
doping with methane.
 Natural uranium metallic fuel clad in magnesium
alloy (magnox), the magnox cladding surrounding
the fuel contained the fission products and with fins
on the outer surface to promote the heat transfer to
the coolant.
 Design constrain- uranium metal melts at 1130 °C
and undergoes an α-β phase transition at 661°C
which case a volume change of about 1%.
 The peak fuel temperature not more than 660°C.
 The clad magnesium alloy melts at 650°C. These
limitations limit the maximum coolant temperature
to 400°C and this lower the efficiency to about 30%.
Section II
AGR “ ADVANCED GAS COOLED

RECATOR”
Schematic diagram of AGR
1. Charge tubes
2. Control rods
3. Graphite moderator
4. Fuel assemblies
5. Concrete pressure vessel
and radiation shielding
6. Gas circulator
7. Water
8. Water circulator
9. Heat exchanger
10. Steam
AGR – Advanced Gas Reactor
 To increase the efficiency of a slightly enriched UO2 (2.5%) is used which
make the fuel withstand a much higher temperature.
 The efficiency increases to 40% by increasing the coolant operating
temperature to 650 oC.
 AGR fuel claddings are hollow tubes made of austenitic stainless steel.
 The clad used to encapsulate the fuel pellets so that they remain leak-free
in the reactor core operating at a 40 bar pressure of CO2-coolant
circulation.
AGR Core
AGR Cont.
 TFuel<1300 °C
 TIn ~310 °C
 TOut ~675 °C
 Tsteam ~553 - 650 °C
 TGraphite ~500 °C to reduce C loss

 The fuel elements of an AGR are comprised of 36 pins containing small pellets
containing uranium built into a graphite sleeve. Seven or eight fuel elements are fixed
together vertically by a tie bar which passes through the centre of the elements to
form a fuel stringer.
 A plug unit is attached to the top of the stringer to form a complete fuel assembly.
 An assembly is placed into each of the standpipes, so that the fuel elements are
positioned within the graphite core’s fuel channels and are then sealed in by the plug
unit.
 The graphite core also contains channels for boron steel control rods, which can be
raised and lowered by electric motors to control the reactor power by absorbing
neutrons and stopping those splitting atoms.
Magnox and AGR vs PWR
PWR fuel assembly:
AGR fuel
assembly: UO2 pellets loaded into fuel
UO2 pellets loaded pins of zirconium each ~ 3
m long in bundles of ~200
into fuel pins of
stainless steel each
~ 1 m long in
bundles of 36.
Whole assembly in
a graphite
Magnox fuel rod:
cylinder
Natural Uranium metal bar
approx 35mm diameter and
Burnable 1m long in a fuel cladding
poison made of MagNox.
Section III
HTGR “ HIGH TEMPERATURE GAS

COOLED REACTOR”
High Temperature gas cooled reactor-
HTGR
 For higher thermal efficiency higher gas temperatures up to 1000°C are
necessary
 CO2 gas temperature is limited to 800°C then it disintegrates into C and O
Only stable gas with good nuclear and thermal properties is Helium which
has the following advantages;
 Chemically inert
 No activation
 High specific heat
 Stable to high temperatures
Class activity
• Take 5 minutes to estimate, how many ping pong balls fit into
the classroom?
• (Remember the heuristic: Any answer is better than nothing)

Refine your model
• Take another 10 minutes to refine your model
HTGR Cont.
 HTGRs are typically characterized by the following main design features:
 graphite moderator and reflector, helium as coolant, coated particle
fuel, and low power density and high efficiency (45% -50%)
 The substitution of He instead of air or CO 2 provided excellent neutronic
and thermal characteristics together with a graphite moderator.
 There are two mainstream HTGR design concepts; the prismatic core
design and the pebble bed core design.
 They both possess common advantages of the HTGR design such as
inherent safety and high efficiency. In the prismatic core design, fuel
compacts in graphite blocks while in the pebble bed core design fuel is
in billiard ball sized spheres.
Prismatic core design
Prismatic core design Cont.
Pebble bed core design
Fuel spheres
Fuel sphere
Pebble bed core design Cont.
Pebble bed core design
Core layout
Cross sectional view of HTR-10 cell model, basal and central planes.
Light colored balls are fuel and dark colored ones are moderator balls.
HTGR Advantages
• There are many advantages of HTGRs over conventional water
cooled reactors from the safety point of view.
• First of all, the large mass of the graphite moderator provides high
heat capacity. Core materials are made of ceramic materials and
usable at elevated temperatures.
• The helium coolant is single phase and an inert fluid. Thus,
chemical interactions between fuel, moderator, and coolant can
be avoided. However, these same chemical interactions are the
primary concern in water cooled reactors, especially during
transients since water-zirconium reactions are exothermic at
elevated temperatures and such reactions become autocatalytic.
• According to the HTGR fuel design philosophy, the SiC layer in
TRISO particles serve as the primary pressure boundary. Modern
TRISO particles have very high fission product retention capability.
Kernels
Two types of fuel designs were used extensively, namely, bi-isotropic (BISO)
and tri-isotropic (TRISO) particles. The BISO-coated particle design
consisted of two layers of pyrocarbon surrounding a spherical fuel kernel.
The first layer was a porous buffer layer and it was surrounded by a dense
pyrocarbon (i.e., “pyrolytic” carbon or PyC), layer.
In a TRISO coated particle there are four layers consisted of a porous buffer
layer, an inner PyC layer (IPyC), a SiC layer, and another outer PyC layer
(OPyC), sequentially.
Both BISO- and TRISO-coated particles have gaseous fission product
retention capability; however, the use of BISO particles has been limited
to low temperature and low burnup operations.
The TRISO coated particle can retain metallic fission products at HTGR
operational, transient, and design accident temperatures; therefore, the
TRISO-coated particle has become the logical choice for reduced fission
product release, extended burnup and higher fuel temperature
applications.
Micrograph of a typical BISO & TRISO
Particle
Micrograph of a typical TRISO Particle
Temperature profile of a TRISO.
Nuclear Engineering and Design

Model development for the estimation of fission product release under normal and accident conditions in a HTGR
Hyedong Jeong∗, Yong Hoon Jeong, Soon Heung Chang
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, 373-1, Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea
HTGRs
Neutronic aspects of HTGR
Neutronic aspects of HTGR
Packing fraction effect

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Gas Cooled Reactors

Magnox, AGR and HTGR

AGR “ ADVANCED GAS COOLED

HTGR “ HIGH TEMPERATURE GAS

• (Remember the heuristic: Any answer is better than nothing)

Nuclear Engineering and Design

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