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Countries Go Nuclear for the First Time

Back in the 80’s countries like Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia had seriously considered in constructing their first nuclear power plants. Owing to Chernobyl or finance, it is delayed till now. All have still maintained relatively large nuclear research facility and staff. Recent change in economic and environmental conditions has revitalized the idea not only in these countries, but also added more participants. For example:

- In North Africa and Middle East - Libya, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and a number of Gulf States have asked IAEA's support in constructing their first nuclear power plants.
- In the Far East - Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia have started planning their nuclear projects and building up technical staff.
- Developed countries such as Australia and Israel are seriously considering nuclear because of energy diversity and greenhouse effects.

Most likely the choice will be from the so-called Generation III-plus or evolutionary advanced light water reactor (ALWR) designs. The candidates are Areva EPR, Westinghouse AP1000, Mitsubishi APWR, Korean Advanced PWR (System 80+), GE ABWR and ESBWR and Russian VVER1000.

Each nation’s decision must be individual based upon economics and perhaps politics with the vendor country. Nevertheless, the decision maker must be anxious to distinguish between "devised safe" from "inherent safe"; "forced" vs. "natural" circulation cooling; "active" versus "passive" emergency core cooling systems and "gravitational drain" vs. "automated depressurization" devices.  They are also interested in how the advanced designs reduce the so-called “core degradation frequency (CDF)” of existing LWR’s from order of 10-4 to 10-5 or even10-6 per year.

In PCTRAN we have all of the above plant modules.  By modeling each component’s size, geometric location and control logic faithfully, complicated two-phase flow and natural draft phenomena are reproduced vividly in animation. It is a powerful tool in three aspects:

1. Training the first-generation technical staff - Complement classroom lectures in reactor physics, thermal-hydraulics and plant technology, it is a “live” teaching aid for demonstrating concepts in delayed neutrons, criticality, chain reaction, reactivity feedback, radioactive decay, etc.
2. Evaluation between the various designs - MST is independent from all vendors so it provides unbiased comparison.
3. Demonstration to non-technical managers and politicians – Graphic animation is easy for layman to understand technical difference between the designs.

To achieve the above objectives, you need more than one plant modules. Considering financial constraint of developing countries in their first nuclear project, we will offer a discounted package price. Please contact us for details.