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A series of firsts delivers new Plant Vogtle units
Southern Nuclear was first when no one wanted to be.
The nuclear subsidiary of the century-old utility Southern Company, based in Atlanta, Ga., joined a pack of nuclear companies in the early 2000s—during what was then dubbed a “nuclear renaissance”—bullish on plans for new large nuclear facilities and adding thousands of new carbon-free megawatts to the grid.
In 2008, Southern Nuclear applied for a combined construction and operating license (COL), positioning the company to receive the first such license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2012. Also in 2008, Southern became the first U.S. company to sign an engineering, procurement, and construction contract for a Generation III+ reactor. Southern chose Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized water reactor, which was certified by the NRC in December 2011.
Fast forward a dozen years—which saw dozens of setbacks and hundreds of successes—and Southern Nuclear and its stakeholders celebrated the completion of Vogtle Units 3 and 4: the first new commercial nuclear power construction project completed in the U.S. in more than 30 years.
K. D. KUCZEN, T. R. BUMP
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 2 | Number 2 | April 1957 | Pages 181-198
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE57-A25386
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Local heat transfer coefficients were measured in a circular, copper tube of inner diameter 0.25 in., outer diameter 0.55 in., and length 36 in. Direct resistance heating of the tube wall from a direct current power source dictated the size and material of the test section. Since the electrical resistivity of copper varies appreciably with temperature, the radial heat flux was nonuniform along the length. (The temperature drop across the tube wall was small; therefore the heat flux in the radial direction was assumed uniform.) The test section was cooled from the inside with the eutectic alloy of sodium and potassium (22% Na, 78% K) flowing turbulently in a vertical direction. The range of variables covered in the experiment was as follows : fluid temperature from 85° to 1175°F, fluid velocity 4 to 60 ft/sec, Reynolds number 13,000 to 466,000, Peclet number 268 to 3850, average heat flux 28,600 to 3,200,000 Btu/(hr ft2). The maximum local heat flux was 6,000,000 Btu/(hr ft2). For the above test conditions the experimentally measured Nusselt numbers ranged from 1.4 at the low Peclet number to 22.4 at the high Peclet number. Most of the fully-developed Nusselt numbers found are lower than indicated by the Lyon-Martinelli equation, but are in quite good agreement with data of most other experimenters. The values of Nusselt number in the entrance region are about 40% higher than those predicted by Deissler, and approximately 10% higher than the data of Johnson, Hartnett, and Clabaugh. Near a Peclet number of 300, the Nusselt numbers observed were lower, by a factor of more than two, than the theoretical minimum for fully developed laminar flow. The reason for this abnormality has not been established.