4 Types of Reactor and Their Explanation

           As said by my group partner, there are 4 main types of reactors which are the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) , Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (AGR), Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor or CANDU reactors.

           The way to look at the table is, first look at the major features. That is the row that tells you what type of reactor that is. For instance, AP 1000 is a type of PWR power plant and EPR is European Pressurized Reactor. The rest you could google it up and it will be interrelated to the types that I mentioned above. Then move on to vendor and you will find the name of the vendor and from there we can find where is the origin of that technology. One of the main criterion that is used for choosing the reactor is the output power. Its measured in MWe. Different types of reactor produces different amount of power.

           Next is the plant efficiency and this value is the value that shows that out of all the excess heat, only that percentage of electricity is successfully converted. Then we can see the design life and nowadays its commonly made to up to 60 years. We could also see the amount of time needed to construct a power plant as well and the lesser it is the better it is. There is another row as well for "Extensive use of Prefab". What that refers to is the prefabrication of the construction parts and and assembling it at the construction site compared to conventional method of building the parts at the site. This would also reduce the time needed for construction of power plant.

            Then you can see the containment row, it shows the amount of containment layer exist in the power plant. The more the better for this. Then there is safety system, and there is two types which are active and passive. The active ones has a higher chance of failing since it depends on some mechanisms which depends on electricity. If there is a power break down, then this mechanism doesn't work. Its better to have passive safety systems then. Next is the core catcher function, which is also another important safety feature in a reactor and the availability of it is good for our country. Fuel lattice type just explains to us the fuel rods assembly. The last is the availability of steam generators. A BWR reactor wouldn't have steam generators since it works by creating steam by itself. For the PWR reactor, the heat produced from fission would be transferred to the steam generator and the steam would rotate turbine for power. One of the best reactors for Malaysia is the AP1000 of the PWR type.