Gas turbine modular helium reactor
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The Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor (GTMHR) is a nuclear power reactor design under development by General Atomics. It is a helium cooled, graphite moderated reactor and uses TRISO fuel compacts in a prismatic core design. The core consists of a graphite cylinder with a radius of 400 cm and a height of 10 m which includes 1 m axial reflectors at top and bottom. The cylinder allocates three concentric rings, each of 36 hexagonal blocks with an interstitial gap of 0.2 cm. Each hexagonal block contains 108 helium coolant channels and 216 fuel pins. Each fuel pin contains a random lattice of TRISO particles dispersed into a graphite matrix. The reactor exhibits a thermal spectrum with a peak located at 0.2 eV.
The Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor utilizes the Brayton cycle turbine arrangement, which gives it an efficiency of up to 48% - higher than any other reactor, as of 1995[1]. Commercial Light water reactor (LWRs) generally use the Rankine cycle, which is what coal-fired power plants use. Commercial LWRs average 32% efficiency, again as of 1995.
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