AVR reactor
Encyclopedia
The AVR reactor was a prototype pebble bed reactor
at Jülich Research Centre
in West Germany
. Construction began in 1960, first grid connection was in 1967 and operation ceased in 1988.
It was 15MWe, 46 MWt, and was used to develop and test a wide variety of fuels and machinery over its lifetime. Its Helium outlet temperature was 950°C, but fuel temperature instabilities occurred during operation with locally far too high temperatures. As a consequence the whole reactor vessel became heavily contaminated by Cs-137 and Sr-90 . Concerning beta-contamination AVR is the highest contaminated nuclear installation worldwide as AVR management confirmed 2001 . Some contamination was also found in soil/groundwater under the reactor, as the German government confirmed in February, 2010. Thus the reactor vessel was filled in 2008 with light concrete in order to fix the radioactive dust and in 2012 the reactor vessel of 2100 metric tons will be transported about 200 meters by air-cushion sled and seven cranes to an intermediate storage. There exists currently no dismantling method for the AVR vessel, but it is planned to develop some procedure during the next 60 years and to start with vessel dismantling at the end of the century. In the meantime, after transport of the AVR vessel into the intermediate storage, the reactor buildings will be dismantled and soil and groundwater will be decontaminated. Fuel removal out of AVR was difficult and lasted 4 years. During this procedure it became obvious that the AVR bottom reflector was broken; in its crack about 200 fuel pebbles remain captured. AVR dismantling costs will exceed its construction costs by far.
AVR was the basis of the technology licensed to China to build HTR-10
.
Pebble bed reactor
The pebble bed reactor is a graphite-moderated, gas-cooled, nuclear reactor. It is a type of very high temperature reactor , one of the six classes of nuclear reactors in the Generation IV initiative...
at Jülich Research Centre
Jülich Research Centre
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres and is one of the largest interdisciplinary research centres in Europe...
in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. Construction began in 1960, first grid connection was in 1967 and operation ceased in 1988.
It was 15MWe, 46 MWt, and was used to develop and test a wide variety of fuels and machinery over its lifetime. Its Helium outlet temperature was 950°C, but fuel temperature instabilities occurred during operation with locally far too high temperatures. As a consequence the whole reactor vessel became heavily contaminated by Cs-137 and Sr-90 . Concerning beta-contamination AVR is the highest contaminated nuclear installation worldwide as AVR management confirmed 2001 . Some contamination was also found in soil/groundwater under the reactor, as the German government confirmed in February, 2010. Thus the reactor vessel was filled in 2008 with light concrete in order to fix the radioactive dust and in 2012 the reactor vessel of 2100 metric tons will be transported about 200 meters by air-cushion sled and seven cranes to an intermediate storage. There exists currently no dismantling method for the AVR vessel, but it is planned to develop some procedure during the next 60 years and to start with vessel dismantling at the end of the century. In the meantime, after transport of the AVR vessel into the intermediate storage, the reactor buildings will be dismantled and soil and groundwater will be decontaminated. Fuel removal out of AVR was difficult and lasted 4 years. During this procedure it became obvious that the AVR bottom reflector was broken; in its crack about 200 fuel pebbles remain captured. AVR dismantling costs will exceed its construction costs by far.
AVR was the basis of the technology licensed to China to build HTR-10
HTR-10
HTR-10 is a 10 MWt prototype pebble bed reactor at Tsinghua University in China. Construction began in 2000 and it achieved first criticality in January 2003.In 2005, China announced its intention to scale up HTR-10 for commercial power generation...
.
External links
- Jülich Research Centre.
- The Pebble Bed Evolution (PDFPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
, 17KB). - A safety re-evaluation of the AVR pebble bed reactor operation and its consequences for future HTR concepts