This week, we talk Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) with James Krellenstein, the CEO of Alva Energy. We dive into the engineering, history, and physics of these reactors, how they differ from other designs, and why the United States may have erred in not choosing the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) instead of the Westinghouse AP-1000 for the Vogtle nuclear power plant.For this episode, we’ve included a glossary below to help with unfamiliar terms:

ABWR: Advanced Boiling Water Reactor

ATWS: Anticipated Transient Without Scram

BORAX experiments: Historical experiments testing reactor limits through deliberate failures

BWR: Boiling Water Reactor

COPS: Containment Overpressure Protection System

CRDM: Control Rod Drive Mechanism

ESBWR: Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor

FLEX: Diverse and Flexible Coping Strategies (post-Fukushima enhancements)

FOAK: First of a kind

IGSCC: Intergranular Stress Corrosion Cracking

NOAK: N-nth of a kind

NRC: Nuclear Regulatory Commission

NSSS: Nuclear Steam Supply System (N Triple-S)

PRA: Probabilistic Risk Assessment

PWR: Pressurized Water Reactor

RCIC: Reactor Core Isolation Cooling System

RPV: Reactor Pressure Vessel

SLC: Standby Liquid Control System

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