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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
Marko Maucec, Matjaz Ravnik, Bogdan Glumac
Nuclear Technology | Volume 122 | Number 3 | June 1998 | Pages 255-264
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2867
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A criticality safety study of various forms of multiplying medium based on RBMK-1000 fuel elements is presented. The calculations were performed with the Los Alamos National Laboratory Monte Carlo MCNP4B code. Continuous energy cross-section data have been taken from the ENDF/B-VI and ENDF/B-V libraries and S(,) scattering functions from the ENDF/B-IV library. A detailed three-dimensional model of the RBMK fuel element has been developed. A set of parametric calculations was performed for some hypothetical fuel conditions with the infinite model of storage lattice. Multiplying properties of homogenized mixture of fuel and moderator were also analyzed. Certain combinations of moderator (graphite-water mixture) and fuel may yield a significantly increased multiplication factor with respect to normal reactor lattice conditions. MCNP calculations were performed for fresh fuel conditions. The reduction of the multiplication factor due to burnup up to 20 GWd/TU was estimated using the WIMS/D-5 code for lattice-cell conditions. It was observed that the multiplication factor (kinf or keff) does not exceed unity if the burnup is taken into account regardless of the assumptions on the fuel conditions.