Prestressed Concrete Reactor Vessel Model 1 Page: 1
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INTRODUCTION
The goal of engineers associated with nuclear power plants is
the achievement of safe plants with low generating costs. One
possible means of lowering costs is to increase the power generating capa-
bility for a single generating unit. To accomplish this, the sizes of nuclear
reactors have been increased.
As reactor sizes have become larger, reactor vessels have become
larger. In France and Britain, the physical sizes of the latest carbon-
dioxide -cooled uranium-graphite reactors are 60 to 100 ft in the least interior
dimension. In the 1950's, designers in those countries felt that the difficulty
of construction of adequately safe steel pressure vessels limited the size
of future units. Size was not the whole problem, however, since the reactors
of that period also required coolant gas pressures of the order of 300 to
400 psig for efficient heat transfer. The combination of size and pressure
required that the vessels be fabricated from heavy steel plate and that field
erection and stress relieving procedures be employed. These problems
led designers to seek alternatives to steel pressure vessels.
One such alternative was the pirestressed concrete reactor vessel
(1'CRV). This approach proved practical, and at the time the programde
scribed in this report was initiated, European designers had adopted the
PCRV. In France, reactors G-2 and G-3 were in operation at Marcoule
and construction had started on the EDF-3 reactor at Chinon; in England,
design work on two PCRV's for the British Oldbury Plant was under way.
European nuclear power plants incorporating the PCRV had certain
similarities. The reactors were large and gas cooled. The sizes and
pressures involved resulted in concrete thicknesses of 12 to 20 ft, which
provided shielding as a side benefit. PCRV shapes were essentially
cylindrical, those for reactors G-2 and G-3 having inverted dome-shaped
heads, and those for the Oldbury and EDF-3 reactors using flat slabs as
cylinder closures. Except for geg ral information and a description of1-
model test performed in England, little information on PCRV's was readily
available in this country at the time the PCRV Model 1 work was begun.
A study of a conceptual 1000-MW(e) nuclear power plant performed
at General Atomic is described in Ref. 2. In this study, aHigh-Ternperature
Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) was considered as the means of supplying heat.
"References are listed at the end of each section.1
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Prestressed Concrete Reactor Vessel Model 1, report, October 25, 1966; San Diego, California. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc304068/m1/13/: accessed April 20, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.