High fissile fuel in nuclear submarine lasts long

High fissile fuel in nuclear submarine lasts long

The prototype is serving as a training centre for the nuclear submarine crew

Reactor internals must be rugged and resilient

Reactor internals remain inaccessible for inspection

Every year, on October 30, scientists, engineers and other officials from the Department of Atomic Energy gather near the Central Complex Building, Trombay to celebrate the Founder’s Day. Being the Birth Centenary year of Dr. Homi Bhabha, this year’s celebration was unique. The stock taking of the research and development activities at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) covered compact reactor for Arihant (the nuclear submarine), improved gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication for fast reactors and work on innovative reactors among other areas in the cutting edge of technologies.

BARC designed, developed and built the steam generating unit of Arihant by facing many technical challenges

“The compact Pressurized Water Reactor was designed for this purpose with several features; such as very quick response for power ramping, extremely stable undership motions and resistance against exposure to very high acceleration resulting from eventual depth charges”, Dr Sukumar Banerjee, Director, BARC said in his Founder’s Day Address

“Since the nuclear reactor is fuelled with high fissile containing fuel, it can supply energy in the submerged condition for an extended period without refuelling”, he clarified. Details about the reactor are classified.

Generally, Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) power nuclear submarines. A PWR has a core of highly enriched uranium. When uranium nuclei undergo fission, the fission fragments carry enormous energy. They dissipate the energy in the core which gets heated up. The high pressure primary system with water as coolant removes the heat from the core continuously.

Water at high temperature enters the steam generators. In the steam generators, the heat from the water in the primary system is transferred to the secondary system to create steam. In the secondary system, the steam flows from the steam generators to drive the turbine generators, which supply the ship with electricity, and to the main propulsion turbines, which drive the propeller. After passing through the turbines, the steam condenses into water which is fed back to the steam generators by the feed pumps.

Naval reactors pitch and roll. Demands of power change rapidly. The manufacturing and quality assurance of reactor components must be of exceptionally high standard.

The reactor internals remain inaccessible for inspection or replacement throughout the long life of their core. They must be rugged and resilient. Reactor components and systems must withstand, harsh and hostile environment, long term effects of radiation, corrosion, high temperature and pressure.

As the reactor operates radiation level increases. Appropriate shields are built around the reactors to ensure radiation safety. A reactor may use over 100 tons of lead as shielding.

“Many systems and equipment designed and built were first of its kind in the country. The entire steam generating plant has been designed to give highly reliable offshore operation in a completely isolated environment”, Dr Banerjee noted.

“Control and instrumentation design is fault tolerant and requires minimum operator interventions. An elaborate diagnostic system enables a very high availability factor. Many new materials and technologies have been developed and new infrastructure has been created for this project”, he revealed.
Prototype system

The development of the steam generating plant of Arihant was preceded by setting up of the land based prototype system at Kalpakkam. The reactor which has been working for the past three years has served as a technology demonstrator.

“The entire plant with primary, secondary, electrical and propulsion system along with its integrated control was packed in the aft end of a land based submarine hull designed and built specifically for the purpose.

This protoype is serving as a training centre for the crew for the nuclear submarine”, Dr Banerjee said. The crew gets training with the help of an indigenously designed and built full scope simulator.

K.S. PARTHASARATHY

Raja Ramanna fellow, Department of Atomic Energy

( ksparth@yahoo.co.uk)

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