The Development of the Evolutionary BWR

Considering the delay of the fast breeding reactor (FBR) development, it is expected that the light water reactor will still play the main role of the electric power generation in the 2030’s. Accordingly, Toshiba has been developing a new conceptual ABWR as the near-term BWR. We tentatively call it AB1600. The AB1600 has introduced the hybrid active/passive safety system in order to improve countermeasure against severe accident (SA). At the same time, we have made the simplification of the overall plant systems in order to improve economy. The simplification of the AB1600 is based on the proven technologies. To retain the safety performance superior or equivalent to the current ABWR and to strengthen the countermeasure against SA, the AB1600 has introduced the passive systems such as the passive containment cooling system (PCCS), the gravity driven core cooling system (GDCS) and the isolation condenser (IC). While we retain the safety performance superior or equivalent to the current ABWR, we have made the simplification of the safety systems. We could eliminate the high pressure core flooder system (HPCF) and the reactor core isolation system (RCIC) by extending the height of reactor pressure vessel (RPV) two meters. To achieve simplification of reactor systems, we have reduced the number of fuel bundles and the number of control rods by adopting large bundle that has a bundle pitch 1.2 times wider than that of the current ABWR. In the 1600MWe class, the number of fuel bundles could be reduced to 600 from 872 of the current ABWR, and the number of control rods could be reduced to 137 from 205 of the current ABWR. Because the reactor internal pump (RIP) of the current ABWR has sufficient performance capacity and the improvement of fuel characteristics from the current fuel enables the operation at lower core flow, the number of RIPs could be decreased from ten to eight. Furthermore, we have reduced the number of divisions of emergency core cooling system (ECCS)/heat removal system to two from three of the current ABWR. This configuration change contributes to reduce the amount of resources of not only reactor systems but also auxiliary systems. In the previous paper, the AB1600 had four low pressure flooder systems (LPFLs). We have studied about the possibility of reduction of LPFLs to two from four by providing the LPFL with alternative injection lines. This change is expected to contribute to reduce the total number of ECCS pumps and the capacity of emergency AC power.