Advanced boiling water reactor
[3] The standard ABWR plant design has a net electrical output of about 1.35 GW, generated from about 3926 MW of thermal power.
Major areas of improvement include: The RPV and Nuclear Steam Supply System (NSSS) have significant improvements, such as the substitution of RIPs, eliminating conventional external recirculation piping loops and pumps in the containment that in turn drive jet pumps producing forced flow in the RPV.
These pumps are powered by wet-rotor motors with the housings connected to the bottom of the RPV and eliminating large diameter external recirculation pipes that are possible leakage paths.
The 10 internal recirculation pumps are located at the bottom of the annulus downcomer region (i.e., between the core shroud and the inside surface of the RPV).
The first reactors to use internal recirculation pumps were designed by ASEA-Atom (now Westinghouse Electric Company by way of mergers and buyouts, which was owned by Toshiba) and built in Sweden.
Thus, in addition to the safety and cost improvements due to eliminating the piping, the overall plant thermal efficiency is increased.
An operational feature in the ABWR design is electric fine motion control rod drives, first used in the BWRs of AEG (later Kraftwerk Union AG, now AREVA).
[9] The ABWR is licensed to operate in Japan, the United States and Taiwan, although most of the construction projects have been halted or shelved.
Work on Shimane halted after the 2011 earthquake[10] On June 19, 2006 NRG Energy filed a Letter Of Intent with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two 1358 MWe ABWRs at the South Texas Project site.
[15][5] Both projects were paused in March 2012 by the shareholders at the time (RWE and E-ON)[16] to put Horizon up for sale, with Hitachi becoming the new owner.
The first two plants in Kashiwazaki-Kariwa (block 6 & 7) reach total life operating factors of 70%, meaning that about 30% of the time, since commissioning, they were not producing electricity.
[35] The most developed design variant is the ABWR-II, started in 1991, an enlarged 1718 MWe ABWR, intended to make nuclear power generation more competitive in the late 2010s.
