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Nuclear Criticality Safety
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Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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.
J. A. Fleck, Jr.
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 2 | Number 5 | September 1957 | Pages 694-708
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE57-A25437
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The linearized hydrodynamic equations governing the expansion of a frictionless compressible coolant from a cylindrical untapered reactor core admit an exact solution. The pressure so obtained depends only on the time required for an acoustic signal to travel from the core boundary to the core center and is quite independent of the amount of fluid external to the reactor. The pressure should behave similarly in the case of moderate tapering of the core. In the case of extreme tapering it is necessary to consider the external fluid as incompressible. In this case it is possible to obtain an approximate solution for the pressure, which does depend on the amount of external fluid.
