Atomic Power at Shippingport (ca 1958)

[Music] in his address dedicating the shipping Port Atomic power station on May 26th 1958 the president of the United States said this plant has a secure place in American history it is the first of the world's large a nuclear power stations exclusively devoted to Peaceful purposes it is with pride in what has been accomplished at shipping Port Pennsylvania and with equal confidence in the future that I now dedicate this shipping Port Atomic Power Station to the cause of scientific progress to the cause [Music] of [Applause] this transmission line is feeding 60,000 KW of power into the system of the Duane light company serving Pittsburgh the steel city of the United States the origin of this power is this Atomic power station on the Ohio River at shippingport Pennsylvania primary objective to gain information and to advance reactor technology in addition the objective was to obtain a nuclear power plant that would be readily operable in a conventional electric utility Network and with a high availability at all times it is the first full-scale nuclear power plant for generation of electricity in the United States Westinghouse Electric Corporation developed and designed the atomic reactor under the direction of and in technical cooperation with the naval reactors branch of the United States atomic energy commission Duane light company provided the turbine generator and is operating the entire plant hundreds of other companies large and small made valuable contributions to the project the plants generator was synchronized with the utility system just 16 days after the reactor went critical for the first time and 5 days later 60,000 KW the reactor design rating went into the transmission lines now what made this achievement possible this film report will show in part what had to be done from proposal of the project to production of the power basically the pressurized water reactor station operates on a simple principle embodying a primary and a secondary heat transfer system in the primary system ordinary water of high Purity kept Under Pressure to prevent boiling is pumped through the reactor this contains uranium Fuel and control rods the water serves as a neutron moderator as well as a heat transfer medium heated by the fuel the water flows through a heat exchanger there it gives up some of its heat is then recirculated by the pump repeating the cycle in the secondary system which comprises a separate water circulation system saturated steam is generated in the heat exchanger flows through a steam drum containing steam separators and through a turbine which drives the generator then goes through a condenser and as water is pumped back to complete and repeat the cycle the use of separate systems prevents the possibility of transferring radioactivity from the primary system to the turbine and condenser specifications were drawn up by the atomic energy Commission in 1953 and included generation of at least 60,000 KW net electrical output from saturated steam at 600 lb per square in ordinary water as the coolant and moderator at 2,000 lb per square in pressure and fuel element life as long as possible between chemical reprocessing with an initial goal in excess of 3,000 megawatt days per ton there were several other stipulations with safety within the plant and its vicinity to be an overriding feature here then was the basis on which the plant was to be built a plant that would provide experience and experimentation for the benefit of future nuclear power stations a facility in which a variety of reactor cores may eventually be operated a plant made possible by a close working relationship between government and Industry these basic ideas evolved into this schematic plan of the shipping Port Station it makes use of four similar Loops all supplying steam to the one turbine any Loop can be shut down for maintenance or for instrumentation to permit studies and experiments while a plant is operating at full capacity behind the successful completion of shipping Port was the Blazing of trails into new territory the solution of countless problems in physics chemistry engineering manufacturing and construction these problems many completely without precedent fell into four general areas the first and foremost being the reactor it posed many new complex and interrelated problems in design and in technology they involved determining the most suitable fuel materials designing the sizes and configurations of fuel elements processing of fuel materials and Manufacturing elements determination of control rod material and design detection and location of any failed fuel elements the complex instrumentation needed for the Gathering of Highly useful information on core and plant operations and the design of the reactor vessel in the second area were problems involving the water what operating temperatures in the primary system how to control a 2,000 lb pressure how to minimize corrosion what measure for water Purity the third area concerned problems of assuring complete safety for persons in the plant and in the surrounding area these problems involved shielding and measures for containment of fision products the first barrier confining the fuel a second one confining the primary water and the third barrier the plant container surrounding the entire nuclear portion of the plant in the fourth area are with the problems of special equipment zero leakage pumps of unprecedented size large remotely controlled hermetically sealed valves instruments to continuously monitor reactivity from source to above full power levels and operational radiation monitoring equipment the solutions to some of the shipping Port problems are evident in the physical form taken by the plant as seen in this scale model 1 14th the size of the actual plant the thick walls of ordinary reinforced concrete provide effective Neutron and Gamma shielding their thickness averages 5 ft at the heart of the plant is the reactor inside a 38t sphere topped by a 18 ft in diameter the pressure vessel is over 10 ft in diameter and 33 ft high within it of course is the fuel and the control rods three underground Chambers steel shells 50 ft in diameter and an inch and a/4 thick along with the sphere containing the reactor make up the plant container this is one of the two similar boiler Chambers a concrete Shield separates the two Loops within it permitting access access to an inactive Loop while the plant is operating the steam generator consists of this steam separator and heat exchanger the four Loops are capable of producing a total of over a million pounds of steam per hour this chamber 150 ft long is used for auxiliary equipment such as the primary water pressurizer and the pressure relief system this is the Canal area for underwater handling of irradiated fuel with facilities for core disassembly and temporary storage of used fuel before the plant could become a reality most of the problems of materials sizes shapes and workable arrangements had to be solved the biggest and most important problems naturally were those concerning the reactor these were solved at the United States atomic energy commission's Bettis plant there were many problems in physics to be solved the first of these was to establish a core pattern this required reactive physics analysis and thermal and hydraulic calculations mechanical design studies and investigations of fuel element configurations and material were also being made one of the aspects considered was the desirability of using two types of uranium instead of the single type of slightly enriched uranium that was originally contemplated if some highly enriched uranium could be used along with the much larger quantity of unenriched or natural uranium there might be many advantages youon economic as well as physical in this New Concept the enriched material was referred to as seed and surrounding it would be a blanket activated by the seed the pattern evolved was that of a hollow square of 32 seed assemblies with blanket assemblies both inside and out but such a blanket would have to satisfy certain requirements the material must pass severe tests of corrosion resistance to high temperature water radiation stability was necessary so that cladding would not tend to rupture if elements failed the failure should not progress to other elements and the blanket fuel must contain maximum uranium loading or content the problem was that no such fuel materials were known it was was necessary to establish an extensive metallurgical program to do research and develop Technologies it was recognized first of all that metallic uranium could not serve as blanket material it had very poor corrosion resistance for one thing perhaps however a uranium alloy could be used mulinum niobium and silicon were among the possibilities that were investigated at Bettis another material being studied was uranium dioxide U2 though little known it merited study it was corrosion resistant because was as an oxide it was in effect already corroded furthermore tests indicated good irradiation stability and it met the other criteria but its physical properties were not known even such fundamental properties as melting points and thermal conductivity had to be determined many aspects of the chemical behavior of the oxide were studied these included such things as its reaction with hot water its reaction with a zirconium alloy which might be used as cladding and the effects of particle sizes on chemical behavior it was found that U2 could be centered successfully if carried out in a hydrogen atmosphere this process increased both density and strength many tests including in pile radiation were performed on uranium Alloys and U2 included were tests on intentionally defective samples based on these tests the oxide offered the most promise accordingly it was selected as the blanket fuel although the development of the manufacturing processes was then begun the extensive test program was continued to verify the selection of U2 more than 2 million uranium oxide pellets and 95,000 blanket tubes were made processing of pellets included agglomerating compacting centering and grinding fuel rods and bundles were assembled Aron atmosphere welded anal and machined in the meantime seed elements were also being made the basic component of the seed cluster is an enriched uranium fuel plate it is sandwiched between two zirconium alloy cover plates subassemblies were joined with the necessary spacers to create a cruci to form channel for the control rod made of hafnium hafnium being a good Neutron absorber and having high corrosion resistance is ideally suitable control rod material while fuel manufacturing proceeded extensive reactor physics calculations were performed to determine the design reactivity of the core a certain amount of excess reactivity to be controlled by the contr rods had to be provided to compensate for fuel depletion for the buildup of vision product poisons and for reactivity changes between room temperature and operating temperature to provide for experimental checks of the calculations a flexible critical experiment in reality a nuclear model of the core was constructed at the Bettis plant it was designed to operate at room temperature using this critical assembly calculations of reactivity at room temperature could be checked with reasonable prec but the reactivity at operating temperature could be anticipated only on the basis of calculations initially there must be sufficient reactivity to sustain criticality or a neutron multiplication constant of one or Unity the excess reactivity was designed to include 6% for fuel depletion 4% for fision product poisons 3% for temperature changes and 5% design margin to allow for the uncertainties in the design of this unprecedented type of the total of 18% excess reactivity was selected as the optimum more might cause difficulties with operation and shutdown less either no criticality or shortened Life Of The Core operating measurements that have been made in the plant indicate that the reactivity calculations were substantially correct and that the 5% design margin that was included can be used to provide additional lifetime for the core the critical assembly also permitted an accurate determination of the control rod positions required to bring criticality it was important that this be determined because in a power reactor unlike an experimental reactor the technique of adding fuel as a means of slowly approaching criticality is Not Practical the preliminary experimental work done made it possible to predict the initial critical position of the control rods to within a fraction inch out of a total motion of 6 ft the critical assembly also permitted measurements of neutron flux distribution since such measurements could be made only at room temperature the ultimate check could be made only on the shipping Port reactor under operating conditions to permit such measurements and thereby provide valuable information for use in the design of future reactors an elaborate system of Co ENT flow and temperature instrumentation was provided at shipping Port half of the seed and about one sixth of the blanket fuel assemblies are instrumented for flow measurement approximately 2/3 of the seed and one qu of the blanket assemblies have thermocouples placed to measure the temperature of the water leaving the fuel assembly additional thermocouples at the bottom of the core give core Inlet water temperatures the temperature data and the flow data are used to compute power distribution in various regions of the core measurements which have been made indicate a good agreement with the physics calculations to raise the power level the control rods the desired power is attained then they are moved back to the operating position to lower the output the opposite action is taken no action is necessary to ACC changes in electrical power demand imposed on this plant by the utility Network this is due to the large negative coefficient of reactivity which maintains a constant average water temperature in the primary circuit regardless of changes in Steam demand for example if the inlet water temperature is 500 8° F and the outlet temperature is 538 de the average water temperature is 523 de with increased steam demand caused by an increase in electrical output the inlet water temperature may drop to 500° the reactor automatically increases power output and the outlet temperature automatically increases to 546 de note that the average temperature remained constant making the reactor plant virtually self-regulating the value of this temperature coefficient was found to be -3 * 10-4 per fahit degree at operating temperature a value which agrees well with the calculations of this quantity nearly two years of design development and Engineering were necessary before plans began to be definite and construction drawings made up then in March of 1955 construction began with the clearing of the site by mid 1956 considerable progress had been made the force of construction workers numbered in the hundreds by then a large part of the concrete shielding had been poured the container Chambers were in place and the canal section could be identified easily with the reactor sphere in position major equipment items began to arrive on the site the 150 ton pressure vessel having completed all of the shop processes involved in its fabrication began its journey to shipping Port it was installed on October 10th 1956 the basic methods employed for installing the units were similar to those followed in major construction projects the high order of cleanliness was necessary while the primary system was open such as during installation of the thermal Shield the climax of these operations came on October 6th 1957 the precise placement of the fuel core in the reactor the shipping Port plant has a large number of newly developed items of equipment to ensure safety and reliability typical of these are zero leakage canned motor pumps in this design no shaft seal is necessary metal cans enclose both Stater and rotor primary water circulates between them lubricating the bearings and cooling the induction motor a separate water supply cools the stator coils the turban generator is outdoors unusual at Latitude 41° North in the United States the shaft speed of the unit is 18800 RPM it is capable of producing 100,000 Kow in anticipation of future core developments the shipping port plant was completed and full power operation was begun approximately 3 years after the start of construction which is in line with the time taken to build non-nuclear plants the total elapsed time from the award of the design contract was 4 and 1/2 years control of the operation of the plant is naturally divided into three parts reactor steam generation and power generation in addition extensive instrumentation will provide a vast amount of information never before available Among The Continuous readings taken are water pressures temperatures flow rates and power level in the reactor in keeping with the developmental nature of the plant a large part of the instrumentation is provided for indic ating and recording design information and unusual events and is not necessary for normal operation typical of this type of instrumentation is the extensive system designed to detect and locate fuel element failures on December 2nd 1957 the reactor went critical for the first time this was the 15th anniversary of self- sustaining nuclear fision in the world's first reactor at stag Field in Chicago on December 18th 1957 with the generator synchronized with the Ducane light company system the first step was made to go to full power on each successive day the output was increased at 50% output the coefficient of reactivity was measured and found to be in agreement with preliminary calculations made at Bettis the full output of 60,000 KW was reached 5 days after synchronization the city of Pittsburgh was lighted with the aid of atomic power at shipping Port this new source of power had been put to work it was a history making accomplishment many operational tests have been conducted and shipping Port has operated with an ease and responsiveness surpassing conventional power stations in addition to its value as an operating power station is also to gain information to advance reactor technology tests are continuing for the purpose of carrying out this mission of the shippingport project to provide fullscale plant experience in development design design construction and operation experience that will be invaluable to the future of nuclear power the world over