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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Kazuo Takino, Kazuteru Sugino, Kenji Yokoyama (JAEA), Tomoyuki Jin (NESI Inc.), Shigeo Ohki (JAEA)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1214-1220
Since next-generation fast reactors aim to achieve a higher core discharge burn-up than that of the conventional ones, nuclear design methods need to refine. In this study, we investigated the effect that the analysis conditions exhibit on the accuracy of estimations of the burn-up nuclear characteristics of next-generation fast reactors. Suitable analysis schemes and conditions that maximize the estimation accuracy, while maintaining a low computational cost, were investigated in this study.
We performed core burn-up survey calculations under several analysis conditions. In the survey calculations, we calculated the criticality, burn-up reactivity, control rod worth, breeding ratio, assembly-wise power distribution, maximum linear heat rate, sodium void reactivity, and Doppler coefficient for the equilibrium operation cycles. The accuracy of the low-cost calculations was evaluated by measuring the agreements with the referential detailed conditions.