Criticality for Both High Temperature Pebble Bed Reactors

Both nuclear reactors of the High-Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor-Pebble-bed Module (HTR-PM) at the Shidaowan plant in China’s Shandong province have reached criticality for the first time. The HTR-PM has two 250 MW thermal reactors that drive a single 210 MWe turbine.

Commercial 600 MWe pebble bed reactors (6×250 MWt, total 655 MWe) will follow.

the HTR-PM600 plan was in a 2017 presentation.

The HTR-PM600 commercial system will have less than 40% of the costs for the HTR-PM. This would have costs of about $2500 per KWe. The 600 MWe unit would cost $1.5 billion if that cost target could be reached.

SOURCES- World Nuclear News, IAEA
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com