부산대학교 도서관

The IRIS (International Reactor Innovative and Secure) reactor design is being developed by an international consortium of 21 organizations from ten countries, including three members from Brazil and one from Mexico. This reflects the interest that Latin America has for a project which addresses the energy needs of the region. Presented here are some of the most recent developments in the IRIS project. The project's highest priority is the current pre-application licensing with the US NRC, which has required an investigation of the major accident sequences and a preliminary probabilistic risk assessment (PRA). The results of the accident analyses confirmed the outstanding inherent safety of the IRIS configuration and the PRA analyses indicated a core damage frequency due to internal events of the order of 2E-8. This not only highlights the enhanced safety characteristic of IRIS which should enhance its public acceptance, but it has also prompted IRIS to consider the possibility of being licensed without the need for off-site emergency response planning which would have a very positive economic implication. The modular IRIS, with each module rated at {approx} 335 MWe, is of course an ideal size for developing countries as it allows to easily introduce a moderate amount of power on limited electric grids. IRIS can be deployed in single modules in regions only requiring a few hundred MWs or in multiple modules deployed successively at time intervals in large urban areas requiring a larger amount of power increasing with time. IRIS is designed to operate ''hands-off'' as much as possible, with a small crew, having in mind deployment in areas with limited infrastructure. Thus IRIS has a 48-months maintenance interval, long refueling cycles in excess of three years, and is designed to increase as much as possible operational reliability. For example, the project has recently adopted internal control rod drive mechanisms to eliminate vessel head penetrations and the possibility of corrosion cracking as in Davis-Besse and other plants. Latin America, as many other regions on the earth, needs water as much as electricity. IRIS has developed a water desalination co-generation design which can employ a variety of processes as dictated by local and economic conditions. Applications to the arid Brazilian Nord-Este and Mexican Nord-Oeste are being considered.