The Shippingport Pressurized Water Reactor and Light Water Breeder Reactor

This report discusses the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, located in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, which was the first large-scale nuclear power plant in the United States and the first plant of such size in the world operated solely to produce electric power. A program was started in 1953 at the Bettis Laboratory to confirm the practical application of nuclear power for large-scale electric power generation. It led to the development of zirconium alloy (Zircaloy) clad fuel element containing bulk actinide oxide ceramics (UO{sub 2}, ThO{sub 2}, ThO{sub 2} -- UO{sub 2}, ZrO{sub 2} -- UO{sub 2}) as nuclear reactor fuels. The program provided much of the technology being used for design and operation of the commercial, central-station nuclear power plants now in use. The Shippingport Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) began initial power operation on December 18, 1957, and was a reliable electric power producer until February 1974. In 1965, subsequent to the successful operation of the Shippingport PWR (UO{sub 2}, ZrO{sub 2} -- UO{sub 2} fuels), the Bettis Laboratory undertook a research and development program to design and build a Light Water Breeder Reactor (LWBR) core for operation in the Shippingport Station. Thorium was the fertile fuel in the LWBR core and was the base oxide for ThO{sub 2} and ThO{sub 2} -- UO{sub 2} fuel pellets. The LWBR core was installed in the pressure vessel of the original Shippingport PWR as its last core before decommissioning. The LWBR core started operation in the Shippingport Station in the autumn of 1977 and finished routine power operation on October 1, 1982. Successful LWBR power operation to over 160% of design lifetime demonstrated the performance capability of the core for both base-load and swing-load operation. Postirradiation examinations confirmed breeding and successful performance of the fuel system.