Technical outline of a high temperature pool reactor with inherent passive safety features

Many reactor designers world wide have successfully established technologies for very small reactors (less than 10 MWTH), and technologies for large power reactors (greater than 1000 MWTH), but have not developed small reactors (between 10 MWTH and 1000 MWth) which are safe, economic, and capable of meeting user technical, economic, and safety requirements. This is largely because the very small reactor technologies and the power reactor technologies are not amiable to safe and economic upsizing/downsizing. This paper postulates that new technologies, or novel combinations of existing technologies are necessary to the design of safe and economic small reactors. The paper then suggest a set of requirements that must be satisfied by a small reactor design, and defines a pool reactor that utilizes lead coolant and TRISO fuel which has the potential for meeting these requirements. This reactor, named LEADIR-PS, (an acronym for LEAD-cooled Integral Reactor, Passively Safe) incorporates the inherent safety features of the Modular High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (MWGR), while avoiding the cost of reactor and steam generator pressure vessels, and the safety concerns regarding pressure vessel rupture. This paper includes the description of a standard 200MW thermal reactor module based on this concept, called LEADIR-PS 200. (author)