TerraPower gets OK to start construction of its first nuclear plant
摘要
美国核管理委员会近日批准了TerraPower公司在怀俄明州凯默勒建设其首个核电站的申请。该反应堆采用钠冷快中子设计，并整合了储能系统，由比尔·盖茨投资支持。此次建设许可标志着该公司项目推进的关键一步，但未来仍需获得运营批准。
On Wednesday, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it had issued its first construction approval in nearly a decade. The approval will allow work to begin on a site in Kemmerer, Wyoming, by a company called TerraPower. That company is most widely recognized as being financially backed by Bill Gates, but it's attempting to build a radically new reactor, one that is sodium-cooled and incorporates energy storage as part of its design.
This doesn't necessarily mean it will gain approval to operate the reactor, but it's a critical step for the company.
The TerraPower design, which it calls Natrium and has been developed jointly with GE Hitachi, has several novel features. Probably the most notable of these is the use of liquid sodium for cooling and heat transfer. This allows the primary coolant to remain liquid, avoiding any of the challenges posed by the high-pressure steam used in water-cooled reactors. But it carries the risk that sodium is highly reactive when exposed to air or water. Natrium is also a fast-neutron reactor, which could allow it to consume some isotopes that would otherwise end up as radioactive waste in more traditional reactor designs.
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