We are pleased to announce that Holtec's engineershave succeeded in designing SMR-160 into a "walk-away" safenuclear power plant, which means that if a calamity were tostrike - similar to the tsunami that devastated Fukushima - theplant will passively (without human intervention) switch to and remain in a safeshutdown and cooled configuration for an unlimited period. Faced with anextenuating event, the reactor will automatically shut down and all of theplant's fuel - both in the reactor and the spent fuel pool- will remain in a safely cooled state without the need for electricpower. Unlike its peers, which all have limited duration coping periods,requiring water make-up after a specific number of hours or days, the SMR-160plant is designed to remain passively cooled indefinitely, withoutrequiring any operator activity.

Postulatingan accident leading to a sudden breach in a pressurized reactor coolant line(known as LOCA in nuclear parlance), a break in a main steam line, or a suddenstation blackout, the SMR-160 plant would readily and passively respond to anyof these events without any loss of its cooling capacity or risk of releaseradioactivity or any other adverse effect on the surrounding environment.

As a firstline of defense, SMR-160's designers have eliminated the single largest plant vulnerability - largepiping - entirely from the reactor coolant system and containmentbuilding through creative designs. The largest high-pressure pipe in the plantis eight inches in diameter!  

A secondtransformative design innovation leverages gravity combined with conductionheat transfer - two unfailingly reliable phenomena innature - to facilitate all necessary heat removal from the plant’snuclear fuel, and subsequent expulsion of heat to the atmosphere. The result isa gravity-driven heat rejection system that keeps the nuclear fuel and thecontainment and its internals cool for as long as necessary.

Patents onthe innovative design features that underlie the inherent safety and stabilityof the SMR-160 plant have been filed with the USPTO.

“Unconditional walk-away safety, affordable capital, and operationalcosts are mandatory elements of a viable nuclear power product for the newenergy generation landscape. Making SMR-160 a reliable steward of theenvironment has been central to our development effort, and I’m pleased to saywe’ve successfully achieved our mission", says Tom Marcille, Holtec's VPof Reactor Technologies.