摘要：Recent years have brought about increased interest in small and medium reactors with 700 MW or less output power,as an alternative to large commercialized nuclear units.Currently developed small and medium reactors can compete with large reactors due to the following advantages: 1) smaller sizes allowing manufacture of reactor components in supervised factories 2) less heat output from the secondary circuit, which facilitates location selection 3) less investment and financial risk 4) improved power system stability.The most advanced small nuclear reactor designs appear to be the light water reactors with integrated primary systems, such as Westinghouse IRIS and NuScale,and Toshiba 4S fast-neutron sodium-cooled reactor.The latter is expected to be installed in Galena,Alaska.The main barriers to small reactor technology development are: too many competing projects,fear of new reactor technologies, and perception of small units through the prism of the economy of scale.
