Although RBWRs use new core fuel concepts to burn TRUs, they use the same non-core components as current
Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), including safety systems and turbines.
The Fukushima plant features
boiling water reactors, known as BWRs, which operate at lower pressures than the other main light-water reactor technology, the pressurized water reactor.
"In the U.S., the Department of Energy is considering use of MOX fuel in the Tennessee Valley Authority's Browns Ferry reactors, of the same aging Mark I
boiling water reactor design as Fukushima Unit 3." warns Tom Clements, Southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth.
In India, NPCIL currently operates 20 nuclear power reactors - as compared to 54 in Japan - with an installed capacity of 4,780 MW, including two
Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) and the rest Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWRs).
All the units at the Fukushima complex are
boiling water reactors (2) with reactors 1, 2, and 3 being the General Electric Mark I design (see Figure 2).
The Mox plant is equipped to manufacture fuel pellets, rods and assemblies for pressurised water reactors and
boiling water reactors. The plant recycles used uranium and plutonium into Mox (mixed oxide) fuel, to be sold overseas.
Experimental and numerical stability investigations on natural circulation
boiling water reactors.
Since the 1980s, GE and Hitachi have worked together in developing Advanced
Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) in Asia, a design that represents the world's only commercially proven Generation III reactor design.
While the industry will continue to rely on traditional
Boiling Water Reactors for the near term, the partners would like to progress to new reactor technology by 2030, which poses an additional hurdle for the auto industry as many automakers hope to have hydrogen-fueled vehicles on the market before those spiffy, new tech reactors start up, which means we may have to rely on outdated and inefficient technology to get us started on the hydrogen pathway GM and others have laid out.--KMK
The plant's two 1,350-megawatt advanced
boiling water reactors are supplied by U.S.-based General Electric Co., but are actually built by Japanese subcontractors Hitachi Ltd.
Boiling water reactors (BWRs) seem to be more available, with an average 10.75% unavailability rate in 1999, than pressurised water reactors (PWRs), which show an average unavailability rate of 17.84%.
These include the presure "suppression pools' (wells in
boiling water reactors where steam can condense during an accident, but which might also filter out some fission products); ice condensing systems in some pressurized water reactors; and auxiliary buildings.
The units would be the first commercial
boiling water reactors in the country.
A senior official with Russia's state atomic energy corporation Rosatom said in November that Hitachi-proposed advanced
boiling water reactors have not been tested outside Japan and could be extremely dangerous.
