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WIPP: Lessons in transportation safety
As part of a future consent-based approach by the federal government to site new deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, local communities and states that are considering hosting such facilities are sure to have many questions. Currently, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only example of such a repository in operation, and it offers the opportunity for state and local officials to visit and judge for themselves the risks and benefits of hosting a similar facility. But its history can also provide lessons for these officials, particularly the political process leading up to the opening of WIPP, the safety of WIPP operations and transportation of waste from generator facilities to the site, and the economic impacts the project has had on the local area of Carlsbad, as well as the rest of the state of New Mexico.
Qian Zhang, Liang Liang, Qiang Zhao, Zhijian Zhang, Hongchun Wu, Liangzhi Cao
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 3 | March 2020 | Pages 232-247
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1664146
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Embedded Self-Shielding Method (ESSM) coupled with the heterogeneous Resonance Integral tables and the Enhanced Neutron Current Method (ENCM) with equivalent Dancoff factor are reviewed and reformulated to a unified framework by incorporating the ultra-fine-group slowing-down calculation on two-dimensional square pin cell problems. The comparison between the two approaches on the resonance self-shielding calculation of irregular fuel lattices shows that the reformulated ESSM approach will bring errors to the cross-section prediction of fuel pins in the irregular lattice, especially when the moderator density is low. Also, the reformulated ENCM approach is more stable for different configurations. Further numerical tests show that the scalar flux calculated by the ESSM approach is affected by the global neutron balance across the fuel lattice and ESSM is more sensitive to the error brought by the enforced equivalence.