Nuclear power |
Large mock-up for a small reactor
A full-scale mock-up of the U-Battery small modular high temperature reactor was recently inaugurated at Whetstone in the UK. James Varley reports
It’s not very often that nuclear power plant designers get to see, touch and walk round a full-scale model of their vision, but this is what is now available to the Urenco-led U-Battery microreactor project in the UK.
The recently completed full-size mock-up of the U-Battery – a high temperature helium cooled reactor – is located in the high bay of Cavendish Nuclear’s Whetstone works in Leicestershire, UK. This is a site that has played an important role in the UK’s nuclear industry over many decades and where English Electric’s reactor engineering division was started in the 1950s. The high bay includes a crane that can take a load of 50 t up to about 18 m, which proved invaluable for the U-Battery mock-up installation (as well as a 29 m deep pit that was used in the past to assemble and test AGR refuelling machinery).
A unique fabrication
The full-scale model at Whetstone consists of the main vessels of the 10 MWt/4 MWe U-Battery, the reactor pressure vessel and the intermediate gas/gas heat exchanger vessel, as well as the all- important cross vessel duct that connects them.
Above: U-Battery full scale mock-up. Red line represents ground level
The mock-up project was implemented in around 18 months from initial idea to completion, by U-Battery and Cavendish Nuclear, as supported by the Hyde Group and supply chain organisations. It results from an award made by the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), under its Advanced Manufacturing and Materials (AMM) programme.
Above: Mock-up modules: left, intermediate heat exchanger with primary circuit circulator on top; right, reactor pressure vessel
Above: Cross vessel duct, as simulated in the mock-up
Speaking at an inauguration event in September at Whetstone, Steve Threlfall, general manager of U-Battery, noted that the U-Battery/ Cavendish Nuclear team had successfully overcome “a number of challenges to bring this unique fabrication to life”, not least those arising from working during a pandemic. “By building a full-scale model people get a real sense of what an AMR [advanced modular reactor] looks like as well as how it can be built”, he said. “It also enabled us to determine the requirements for the concept design and justify the nuclear power plant’s operational safety case. This is why the mock-up is essential to the delivery of what will be our first power plant. “Our aim is to take advantage of the economies of scale used in advanced manufacturing and modularisation settings and production line assembly techniques to produce
46 | November/December 2021 |
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this new generation of AMR technology…We are now working to form new partnerships to support the next phase of U-Battery’s design and development.”
Chris Chater, CTO of Urenco, said he saw the full-scale mock-up as a means of “capturing and answering” some key questions, such as: “How are we going to put it together? How are we going to transport it? How simple is it?” And so far the project is indeed showing that “nuclear doesn’t have to be complex, doesn’t have to be huge”, he believes.
James Ewence, new build & advanced nuclear technologies business director, Cavendish Nuclear (a wholly owned subsidiary of Babcock International Group), said that working on this phase of U-Battery development had allowed “our team…to demonstrate the wealth of their experience gained from supporting the UK Advanced Gas Reactor fleet, in combination with up to date modularisation techniques, which have more recently been used in decommissioning projects.”
The mock-up provides a vivid demonstration of this modularisation, with the U-Battery designed to consist of factory manufactured, pre-tested, road transportable modules that can be installed simply, with minimal site assembly work.
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