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NRC looks to leverage previous approvals for large LWRs
During this time of resurging interest in nuclear power, many conversations have centered on one fundamental problem: Electricity is needed now, but nuclear projects (in recent decades) have taken many years to get permitted and built.
In the past few years, a bevy of new strategies have been pursued to fix this problem. Workforce programs that seek to laterally transition skilled people from other industries, plans to reuse the transmission infrastructure at shuttered coal sites, efforts to restart plants like Palisades or Duane Arnold, new reactor designs that build on the legacy of research done in the early days of atomic power—all of these plans share a common throughline: leveraging work already done instead of starting over from square one to get new plants designed and built.
K. Ueki, M. Inoue, Y. Maki
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 84 | Number 3 | July 1983 | Pages 271-284
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE83-A17795
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Integral shielding experiments of spent-fuel shipping casks were carried out with a californium source. The measurements of dose rates were performed not only with a cask as designed but also with one having lost its resin shield. The measured neutron and secondary gamma-ray dose rates are compared with the results of Monte Carlo calculations using the next-event surface crossing (NESX) estimation and the usual point detector estimation. Overall, the Monte Carlo-NESX calculation method was found to give better results. The calculated neutron doses from the undamaged cask were in close agreement with the measured values; the agreement was also good in the case of the damaged cask in the radial and axial directions. In particular, the agreement was quite satisfactory at distances up to 100 cm from the cask surface, although the calculated dose rates were a little smaller than the measured values at locations beyond the cask. Nevertheless, the values agreed with the measured ones within a factor of 2. Furthermore, the calculated secondary gamma-ray dose rates using NESX corresponded closely to the measured values for the undamaged cask. With the present knowledge of Monte Carlo techniques, the method could be employed as an effective means of analyzing the radiation shielding of a cask. In addition, the present experimental data can be adopted as a benchmark for cask design.