IRPhE-DRAGON-DPR, OECD High Temperature Reactor Dragon Project, Primary Documents

Description: The DRAGON Reactor Experiment (DRE): The first demonstration High temperature gas reactor (HTGR) was built in the 1960's. Thirteen OECD countries began a project in 1959 to build an experimental reactor known as Dragon at Winfrith in the UK. The reactor - which operated successfully between 1966 and 1975 - had a thermal output of 20 MW and achieved a gas outlet temperature of 750 deg. C. The High Temperature Reactor concept, if it justified its expectations, was seen as having its place as an advanced thermal reactor between the current thermal reactor types such as the PWR, BWR, and AGR and the sodium cooled fast breeder reactor. It was expected that the HTR would offer better thermal efficiency, better uranium utilisation, either with low enriched uranium fuel or high enriched uranium thorium fuel, better inherent safety and lower unit power costs. In the event all these potential advantages were demonstrated to be in principle achievable. This view is still shared today. In fact Very High Temperature Reactors is one of the concepts retained for Generation IV. Projects on constructing Modular Pebble Bed Reactors are under way. Here all available Dragon Project Reports (DPR) - approximately 1000 - are collected in electronic form. An index points to the reports (PDF format); each table in the report is accessible in EXCEL format with the aim of facilitating access to the data. These reports describe the design, experiments and modelling carried out over a period of 17 years. 2 - Related or auxiliary information: IRPHE-HTR-ARCH-01, Archive of HTR Primary Documents NEA-1728/01. 3 - Software requirements: Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Word, HTML Browser required