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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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NRC begins special inspection at Hope Creek
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting a special inspection at Hope Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey to investigate the cause of repeated inoperability of one of the plant’s emergency diesel generators, the agency announced in a February 25 news release.
D. Squarer, A. T. Pieczynski, L. E. Hochreiter
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 80 | Number 1 | January 1982 | Pages 2-13
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE82-A21399
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the worst hypothetical accident of a light water reactor (LWR), when all protection systems fail, the core could melt and be converted to a deep particulate bed as a result of molten-fuel-coolant interaction. The containment of such an accident depends on the coolability of the heat generating particulate bed. This paper summarizes published theoretical analyses that may predict bed dry out. In three of the analyses, the fluid flow in the heat generating particulate bed is considered to be laminar (Darcy's law), whereas in one study the fluid flow is solved for both the laminar and the turbulent flow regimes and is affected by capillary forces. The theoretical studies are compared with our recent data and with other recently published data covering a range of parameters that is expected in an LWR accident. An extension of the analysis and the experiments to a mixture of particle sizes is presented. The scaling of the dry out data to high pressures, which may be encountered during the course of an accident, is accomplished by multiplying the experimental bed dryout heat flux by the ratio of dry out flux at pressure to the dryout flux at atmospheric pressure. This ratio was calculated with the theoretical model, which agreed best with the experimental dryout data at atmospheric pressure. Based on the pressures and particle sizes expected in a pressurized water reactor core melt, it is concluded that stable (self-cooled) debris bed formation will occur if sufficient water is available.