From Dodewaard to a modern economic passive plant-ESBWR

For over 25 years the Dodewaard nuclear plant has produced electricity with one of the highest reliability of any nuclear power plant in the world. Almost 10 years ago when some designers looked at the features to incorporate in a modern mid-size Boiling Water Reactor (SBWR) design that was developed by an international team and consisted of natural circulation and passive safety injection and decay heat removal. Since the passive decay heat removal was a major new technology area, an extensive test program was developed and conducted - utilizing newly constructed large scale integrated system test facility at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland. The development of any modern reactor is time consuming and expensive, hence, the design and technology was done as part of an international team effort. This paper provides an overview of the international design and technology effort and discusses how the development costs were minimized through cooperation. The result of the design effort showed that overall plant economics could be improved by a power level increase, supported by some modest design changes. This paper provides the approach and key results of this multi-year international design effort to develop a modern, larger scale, passive plant - the European Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR). This effort, in addition to developing an economic nuclear power station, also demonstrates how the benefits of international cooperation can be utilized to keep development costs reasonable. An overview is also provided of the planned research efforts to extend existing technology to the ESBWR. (authors)