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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.
José M. Aragonés, Carol Ahnert
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 94 | Number 4 | December 1986 | Pages 309-322
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE86-A18343
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A linear discontinuous finite difference formulation to solve the diffusion equations in coarse mesh and few groups is developed. The correction factors for heterogeneities, coarse mesh, and spectral effects are general interface flux discontinuity factors that can be explicitly calculated (synthetized) from detailed diffusion or transport solutions in fine mesh (heterogeneous) and multigroups, preserving the integrated fluxes and interface net currents. The stability is explicitly established for general synthetizations and for specific fine to coarse mesh and group reductions. Computing methods have been implemented for one-group (grey) synthetic diffusion acceleration, two-dimensional nodal/local solutions, and three-dimensional nodal simulation of pressurized water reactor cores. Results demonstrate the simplicity and stability of the formulation, a regular behavior of the correction factors, an outstanding acceleration performance, and high potential for parallel and vector computing.