Introducing Kaleidos, a Portable Microreactor from Radiant

[Music] radiant is a startup developing collidos a portable 1.2 megawatt microreactor colitis can be up and running within an hour replacing diesel generators used by remote communities backup power or relief during disaster scenarios our reactor is being designed with sim engine our in-house tool fusing reactor digital twins with aerospace derived hardware in the loop simulators let's take a look inside collidos to see how this capability accelerates reactor and control systems development collidos produces heat through a controlled fission chain reaction in the graphite moderated core a compressor forces helium through the core in the primary loop helium is an inherently safe heat transfer fluid because it doesn't become radioactive the primary loop transfers heat to a supercritical co2 brayton cycle producing power in response to customer load [Music] the fission reaction is controlled by the motion of 16 control drums in a ring around the core each containing an arc of neutron poison meltdown-proof trisol fuel particles are arranged in compact cylinders stacked in fuel channels [Music] state-of-the-art multi-physics modeling tools from the department of energy's neems program are used to produce high accuracy estimates of reactor criticality fuel performance and temperature distribution under a range of operating conditions reduced order models derived from these high fidelity outputs allow real-time simulation of the reactor and its control system with sim engine sim engine's real-time modeling capability enables direct coupling with physical systems demonstrated here by the integration of a control drum into the sim position commands are sent to the drum while its real position is encoded and fed back into the system any mismatch between the physical and simulated system is used to improve modeling fidelity allowing for rapid risk buy down as it runs the simulation is keeping track of all reactor temperatures including the core its control drums and the pressure vessel an air jacket allows direct passive cooling of the pressure vessel under fault scenarios installation reduces heat leak under normal operation and allows for the use of low temperature cost effective shielding materials parameters such as core reactivity vessel and fuel temperatures and output power are plotted alongside the simulation sim engine will now demonstrate integrated execution of the reactor digital twin with its real-time control system as it goes through a startup drums are rotated to insert reactivity until criticality is achieved at this point the neutron population starts growing exponentially when the core starts to heat up due to the release of fission energy the control system further turns the drums in order to maintain criticality the drums move by an additional 30 degrees to offset the core's negative temperature feedback coefficient the turbo machinery ramps up to speed as the core reaches target temperature and a circuit breaker connects the micro grid electrical load unlike traditional nuclear power plants collidos is capable of rapid load throttling or efficiently following a fluctuating electric demand this is accomplished by adjusting the machinery shaft speed the helium mass flow rate and by continuously moving the control drums to modulate core heat generation now sim engine will inject a helium motor malfunction to demonstrate a pressurized loss of coolant [Music] under this kind of failure the temperature of the fuel and vessel are the most limiting safety criteria as the fault is detected the control drums shut in to terminate the fission chain reaction and the air jacket opens allowing heat rejection of the pressure vessel via a natural convection current a small amount of decay heat is still produced by fission products after the fuel temperature peaks in a few hours the entire core cools to ambient temperatures the fuel never exceeds 950 degrees well below the 1600 degree limit established by triso fuel qualification with sim engine radiant is progressively integrating all colliders hardware into this real-time simulation continuously building a safety case derived from real world verification mechanical thermal hydraulics electrical and nuclear engineering teams are working towards a fuel demonstration in idaho in 2026 [Music] visit our website and help us build access to clean dependable and rapidly deployable power across the world let's make nuclear power portable you

Channel: Radiant Nuclear

Views: 173,798

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Id: 9cc1j-MbVVA

Length: 4min 45sec (285 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 09 2022