Modular gas-cooled reactors for electric power generation

Although modular gas-cooled reactors (MGR) are regarded primarily as the potential source of process heat in most of the world, they are considered in USA as the source of base load electric power, in direct competition with coal and other fossil fuels. A consortium of electric utilities is actively pursuing the construction and testing of a demonstration plant to be operational in early 1990s, and the full license for the commercial use by 1995. American electric utilities stopped the order of nuclear power plants in mid 1970s, and the resumption of ordering is not in prospect. Until now, the hiatus has been relatively painless, but it is predicted that the capacity addition of about 10 GWe per year will be required, beginning around 1995. It is believed that nuclear power has the potential to be the cheapest and environmentally the most benign source of electric power available. Uranium conservation is no longer a dominant objective of reactor design. MIT began the studies on the nuclear power plants better suitable to the US utility and social organizations, and found that simplified small LWRs and MGRs are the most promising. MGRs, the US Department of Energy Program, direct cycle gas turbines and others are described. (Kako, I.)