Year
2018
Abstract
High Temperature Gas Reactor (HTGR) is a type of reactor projected to be an advanced reactor design popularly called as Generation IV reactor. It offers promising economic benefits where it can be employed as a co-generation energy converter due to its thermal characteristic that can generate an operating fluid to more than 700o C. This offers a more efficient way for both water desalination and hydrogen production, besides converting its thermal energy into electricity as in common nuclear reactor application. HTGR also offers a different way of safety characteristics compared to most LWR reactors. Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) safety depends on three main characteristics: reactivity control, residual heat removal, and radioactive retention. Due to its high temperature characteristic, it has a passive safety feature from the negative reactivity feedback both in fuels and moderators which offer an automatic reactor shutdown by stopping the coolant flow, even when no control rod insertion is being employed. Due to the usage of TRISO coated particle technology, the fuel elements in HTGR offers an optimum retention of fission product within a very high temperature. Because of these technical characteristics, HTGRs are also believed to have a better proliferation resistance compared to the LWRs. By the historic development of several countries, HTGR can be designed and operated using different fuel types with different fuel cycles where each fuel cycle has its own diversion path(s) that can be complicated and tricky. However, to the most recent day, too little scientific evidence has explained thoroughly the proliferation resistant of HTGR, while it will obviously be needed by regulatory bodies, especially IAEA, to verify that no diversion nor misuse of nuclear material in the promising future operation of HTGR. This paper describes the very basic starting point in correlating some HTGR’s fuel cycle options to the proliferation risk parameters introduced within the cycles. It will offer a basic foundation for an advance study in quantifying the risk itself.