Development of 1000 MWe Advanced Boiling Water Reactor

1000 MWe Advanced Boiling Water Reactor has only two main steam lines and six reactor internal pumps, whereas 1350 MWe ABWR has four main steam lines and ten reactor internal pumps. In order to confirm how the differences affect hydrodynamic conditions in the dome and lower plenum of the reactor pressure vessel, fluid analyses have been performed. The results indicate that there is not substantial difference between 1000 MWe ABWR and 1350 MWe ABWR. The primary containment vessel of the ABWR consists of the drywell and suppression chamber. The suppression chamber stores water to suppress pressure increase in the primary containment vessel and to be used as the source of water for the emergency core cooling system following a loss-of-coolant accident. Because the reactor pressure vessel of 1000 MWe ABWR is smaller than that of 1350 MWe ABWR, there is room to reduce the size of the primary containment vessel. It has been confirmed feasible to reduce inner diameter of the primary containment vessel from 29m of 1350 MWe ABWR to 26.5m. From an economic viewpoint, a shorter outage that results in higher availability of the plant is preferable. In order to achieve 20-day outage that results in 97% of availability, improvement of the systems for removal of decay heat is introduced that enables to stop all the safety-related decay heat removal systems except at the beginning of an outage.Copyright © 2006 by ASME