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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.
J. K. Dickens
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 109 | Number 1 | September 1991 | Pages 92-102
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE91-A23847
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Recently obtained experimental total beta-ray spectra for 77 radionuclides created during fission of 235U are compared with predicted total beta-ray spectra based on beta-ray transition energies and intensities of individual components currently available in the Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF). In addition, experimental average beta-ray energies <Eβ> for 100 radionuclides are compared with evaluated/theoretical <Eβ> from four compilations, namely, (a) a 1982 compilation, (b) the 1989 and current ENSDF, (c) a 1988 compilation by the Japanese Nuclear Data Committee, and (d) predictions using the microscopic theory of Klapdor and Metzinger. None of these evaluations/ predictions is superior in reproducing the experimental data. A comparison of the experimental <Eβ> with the total available beta decay energies Qβ indicates that the approximation <Eβ> ≈ Qβ/3 somewhat overestimates <Eβ> on the average; however, the ratio R = <Eβ>/Qβ varies between 0.11 and 0.46, and there is no discernible trend in R compared with Qβ or <Eβ> nor a discernible difference for radionuclides having T1/2 ≤ 2 s compared with those having T1/2 > 2 s. Lastly, the intensities of possible ground-state decay transitions were estimated for 47 radionuclides and compared with similar data in ENSDF. In 14 cases, a nonzero ENSDF value is supported by the experimental data, and in 8 cases a zero value in ENSDF is supported by the lack of experimental data suggesting a high-energy ground state beta-ray transition. Of the remaining 25 radionuclides, the experimental data for 9 cases suggest that increases are needed in the ENSDF, and for 16 radionuclides the data indicate the need for smaller values of the ground-state transition intensities from those given in the ENSDF, being zero for 4 nuclides (80,81Ga, 84As, and 145Cs).
