THE PEBBLE BED MODULAR REACTOR AND THE USAGE OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING TO ESTABLISH NEW STANDARDS FOR THE NUCLEAR REVIVAL

The realisation that nuclear power will become an essential and leading contributor for future power generation is now being accepted world wide. But the pressure to ensure nuclear safety will stay with the design teams. The next generation nuclear power plants will have to comply to new rules, not based on the existing water cooled reactor technology, and known as Generation IV reactors. The world leader in the development of such a Generation IV nuclear power plant is PBMR (Pty) Ltd in South Africa.Becoming the leader in the field of HTGRs (High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors), did not happen overnight. A set of unique circumstances in South Africa and technical developments in Germany during the 60's and 70's have provided a once in a life time opportunity to a team of engineers and scientists to create a new nuclear power plant. The early adoption of systems engineering practices by the development team has undoubtedly created new momentum into a technical domain dominated by water cooled reactors. The current nuclear power industry is straddled by regulations, legal requirements and rules based design, all to ensure safety to the public, but contributing to possible complex designs, and the associated high capital and operational cost. The PBMR program gave the opportunity to influence the nuclear engineering design processes of future nuclear power plant designs.The paper provides a brief overview of the PBMR technology, its engineered passive safety features, control challenges, matching the nuclear body of knowledge with the systems engineering body of knowledge, some new approaches to existing methodologies to ensure optimal interaction, the unique challenges faced by the team, and the systems engineering opportunities now emerging in the new nuclear world.