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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.
L. Barleon, L. Bühler, K.J. Mack, R. Stieglitz, B.F. Picologlou, T.Q. Hua, C.B. Reed
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 2197-2203
Blanket Shield and Neutronic | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A30045
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In designing a self-cooled liquid metal blanket based on the poloidal-toroidal flow concept, the magnitude of the MHD pressure drop and the character of the velocity distribution in the first wall coolant channels, that result from 3-dimensional MHD effects associated with the required right angle bends in the coolant flow, represent important design issues. To address these issues and to verify the relevant models used in the design, a joint MHD-experiment was conducted by Argonne National Laboratory (AND and Kernforschungszen-trum Karlsruhe (KfK). The test article was designed and built at ANL, and the experiments were performed at KfK's MEKKA facility using a 3.6 Tesla superconducting solenoid magnet and a eutectic sodium potassium alloy working fluid. In the experiments, detailed voltage and pressure distributions on the duct walls and voltage distributions within the liquid metal were measured under a variety of Hartmann numbers and interaction parameters. Representative results from these measurements are presented and compared to analytical predictions valid for very high interaction parameters (inertialess flow). Results indicate that deviation between analysis and experiment is confined to the immediate vicinity of the right angle sharp corner and that, for fusion blanket conditions, the 3-dimensional pressure drop in the radial-toroidal bend of an electrically separated single channel is small compared with the pressure drop of the radial flow.