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Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Latest News
Securing the advanced reactor fleet
Physical protection accounts for a significant portion of a nuclear power plant’s operational costs. As the U.S. moves toward smaller and safer advanced reactors, similar protection strategies could prove cost prohibitive. For tomorrow’s small modular reactors and microreactors, security costs must remain appropriate to the size of the reactor for economical operation.
Seok-Hee Ryu, Kil-Sup Um, Jae-Il Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 189 | Number 2 | February 2015 | Pages 163-172
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-28
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To evaluate the effect of thermal conductivity degradation for high-burnup fuel, a postulated control element assembly (CEA) ejection accident is assessed with the SPACE (Safety and Performance Analysis CodE) code. The SPACE code, which is currently under development as a safety analysis code for nuclear power plants, can predict thermal-hydraulic responses of the nuclear fuel and nuclear steam supply system during design basis accidents with two-fluid, three-field governing equations. Fuel performance behaviors during the CEA ejection accident using six fuel conductivity models including the burnup-independent reference conductivity model, the Lyons model, are investigated and compared with results of the reference model within the range from 0 to 30 GWd/tonne U. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory model predicts the highest peak fuel centerline temperature of 4531°F at 0 GWd/tonne U, and the modified Nuclear Fuels Institute model shows the uppermost value of 4796°F, which is 364°F higher than the reference model at 30 GWd/tonne U. It is also observed that the peak fuel centerline temperature increases linearly with fuel burnup and that the maximum increase rate of the peak centerline temperature per fuel burnup is ∼11.6°F per GWd/tonne U. For all thermal conductivity models, the maximum radial average fuel enthalpies are <230 cal/g, and the rise in radial average fuel enthalpy during the CEA ejection accident still remains within the pellet-cladding-mechanical-interaction failure criterion.