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Chris Forsyth's avatar

Why have HWRs historically had a smaller power output than LWRs? It looks like the largest CANDUs in operation are the Darlington units with 878 MWe (net), and India’s IPHWR-700 series is only ~700 MWe.

The CANDU 9 and Monark obviously do a bit better with ~1000 MWe power outputs, and ACR-1000 aimed for ~1200, but is there some manufacturing constraint - perhaps related to calandria sizing - that prevents them from going higher? If so, maybe LWRs can continue to outcompete HWRs based on economies of scale alone if they stick to very large designs like the ABWR, ESBWR and CAP1400.

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Jesse's avatar

And as the C6 / EC6 in Qinshan shows, the construction can be highly modular, with very reasonable construction durations.

And without the reliance on heavy forging for a RPV, it removes some of the supply chain limitations.

Also, if we do start to make any substantial amount of electolytic hydrogen, we can pair it with the CECE process to get much cheaper heavy water.

On the fuel side, the lack of conversion to and from UF6 greatly improves the energy and cost efficiency of the fuel cycle.

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