Very High Temperature Reactor - History

History

The HTGR design was first proposed by the staff of the Power Pile Division of the Clinton Laboratories (known now as Oak Ridge National Laboratory) in 1947. Professor Dr. Rudolf Schulten in Germany also played a role in development during the 1950s. The Peach Bottom reactor in the United States was the first HTGR to produce electricity, and did so very successfully, with operation from 1966 through 1974 as a technology demonstrator. Fort St. Vrain Generating Station was one example of this design that operated as an HTGR from 1979 to 1989; though the reactor was beset by some problems which led to its decommissioning due to economic factors, it served as proof of the HTGR concept in the United States (though no new commercial HTGRs have been developed there since). HTGRs have also existed in the United Kingdom (the Dragon reactor) and Germany (AVR reactor and THTR-300), and currently exist in Japan (the HTTR using prismatic fuel with 30 MW_th of capacity) and China (the HTR-10, a pebble-bed design with 10 MW_e of generation). Two full-scale pebble-bed HTGRs HTR-PM, each with 100 - 195 MW_e of electrical production capacity are under construction in China as of November 2009, and are promoted in several countries by reactor designers.