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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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DOE issues new NEPA rule and procedures—and accelerates DOME reactor testing
Meeting a deadline set in President Trump’s May 23 executive order “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy,” the DOE on June 30 updated information on its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rulemaking and implementation procedures and published on its website an interim final rule that rescinds existing regulations alongside new implementing procedures.
M. D. Kennedy, J. Woodcock, R. F. Wright, J. A. Gresham
Nuclear Technology | Volume 113 | Number 1 | January 1996 | Pages 14-20
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35195
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Heavy Water Reactor Facility is equipped with a passive cooling system to provide long-term decay heat removal during postulated beyond-design-basis accidents. The passive containment cooling system (PCCS) consists of an annular space between the steel containment vessel and the concrete shield building and optimized inlet and chimney designs. The design, analysis, and regulatory acceptance of a plant with PCCS requires an understanding of the external convective and radiative heat transfer phenomena, as well as the internal distributions of noncondensable gases. The internal distribution of noncondensable gases has a strong effect on the resistance to condensation heat transfer and therefore affects the wall temperature distribution applied to the external channel. To evaluate these phenomena, a test facility having a scale of approximately one to ten, known as the large-scale test, was constructed, and several series of tests were performed. Test results have been used to validate the Westinghouse-GOTHIC (WGOTHIC) computer code. A comparison of WGOTHIC predictions and test results has been completed. This paper shows that mixed-convection models applied to the interior and exterior surfaces as well as a heat and mass transfer analogy for internal condensation provides good comparison to test results. An axial distribution of noncondensables within the test vessel is also predicted.