On September 30, 2004 , the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology (INET) of Tsinghua University carried out the nuclear safety demonstration test in the event of loss of all heat sinks without the scram on the 10MW High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTR-10), which is currently the only one Pebble-bed Test Reactor in the world. The experiment process and approach are fully supervised by China National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA), and several similar tests were done before.
The officers from IAEA and about sixty guests from around thirty countries and areas were present at the site and highly interested in watching the demonstration test.
“The most important characteristics of Modular HTR is that in the event of any failures, including any active cooling system unavailable, the reactor can keep safety without the need for any manual or automatic action, it's the so called inherent or naturally safety,” explains by Zhang Zuoyi, the 42-year-old director of INET.
“This test is very significant”, notes Andrew Kadak, the Nuclear Engineering Professor of MIT, “the safety of nuclear reactor is very important for the next generation. If public see the test in the future, they will feel safe about the nuclear energy.”
Byang-Koo Kim , International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officer , says: “In the past ,only developed countries like USA , Germany can develop this kind of nuclear power system ,but now, China and South Africa are in the leading position of this field. I can visualize that this kind of HTR will be more economic and safer. It requires international cooperation. That's the role of IAEA to develop this information exchange.”
The HTR-10, as the national key “863”program of China , started construction in 1995, reached its criticality in December 2000, and reached its full power operation in January 2003.
The president of South Africa, the minister of Ministry of Science and Technology of France, the minister of Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan, the minister of Ministry of Science and Technology of South Korea and the vice minister of Department of energy (DOE) of U.S.A. etc, have ever visited the HTR-10.
