Interatom, Internationale Atomreaktorbau Gmbh

Interatom, Internationale Atomreaktrobau Gmbh

Gunter Lohnert

Ulrich Muller-Frank

Jurgen Heil

For gas-cooled pebble-bed reactors, an absorber element in the form of a hollow, helical spiral coil is proposed, which moves directly through the pebble bed essentially through rotary motion. This form not only facilitates the penetration into greater depths of the pebble bed, but also has a substantially greater absorber effect as compared to the known, essentially cylindrical absorber rods with the same absorber volume, so that the number of absorber elements can be reduced.

Absorber element for pebble-bed reactors

A pebble-bed nuclear reactor of large power rating comprises a container having a funnel-shaped bottom forming a pebble run-out having a centrally positioned outlet. A bed of downwardly-flowing substantially spherical nuclear fuel pebbles is positioned in the container and forms a reactive nuclear core maintained by feeding unused pebbles to the bed's top surface while used or burned-out pebbles run out and discharge through the outlet. A substantially conical body with its apex pointing upwardly and its periphery spaced from the periphery of the container spreads the bottom of the bed outwardly to provide an annular flow down the funnel-shaped bottom forming the run-out, to the discharge outlet. This provides a largely constant downward velocity of the spheres throughout the diameter of the bed throughout a substantial portion of the down travel, so that all spheres reach about the same burned-out condition when they leave the core, after a single pass through the core area.

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Bensberg, Germany

Gunter Lohnert