Abstract
Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute has been developing the Gas Turbine High Temperature Reactor (GTHTR300) based on design, construction and operational experiences obtained from the High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) in JAERI. The GTHTR300 is a greatly simplified HTGR-GT plant that leads to substantially reduced technical and cost requirements for earlier technology deployment. Also, it is expected to be an efficient and economically competitive reactor in 2010s due to newly proposed design features such as core design with two-year refueling interval, conventional steel material usage for a reactor pressure vessel, innovative plant flow scheme and horizontally installed gas turbine unit. This paper describes the results of the economical evaluation on the GTHTR300. The capital cost is estimated to be less than a target cost of 200 thousands Yen/kWe. In addition, the power generation cost is estimated to be less than a target cost of 4 Yen/kWh. The present study is entrusted from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.
