Estimates of the Modular Underwater SNPP Option

Оne of the most promising and growing areas in nuclear energy today is low-power nuclear power plants (LPNPs), what is caused by the inherent features of this area. But technical solutions used in the state of the art NPP designs do not allow to create a single ready-to-use fabricated module in transport dimensions, so it requires separate delivery of the reactor, turbine and other equipment and causes a significant amount of construction and installation work on site. This approach, due to «economies of scale», does not allow to create a cheap source of energy. The purpose of this work is to carry out calculations of an alternative NPP design based on the socalled «nuclear battery» approach or «Vinogradov scheme» –a single module that contain main equipment of the nuclear power plant (reactor, turbine, generator, heat regeneration system and condenser). There was considered a fast reactor with 125 MW thermal power with a lead coolant, parameters of the primary circuit are similar to BREST reactor (inlet/outlet coolant temperature −420/540°C) and supercritical Brayton cycle on carbon dioxide (initial/final pressure 20.0/8.0 MPa, initial/final temperature of the cycle 520/390⁰С) with single-stage regeneration. Received results confirm the possibility of creating a single-module SMR with the following parameters: electrical power −32 MW, efficiency −25.6%, housing length of the module −18.7 m, housing diameter 4.3 m, weight −900-950 tons, fuel lifetime −1080 days.