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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
R. P. Gardner, C. L. Barrett, W. Haq, D. E. Peplow
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 122 | Number 3 | March 1996 | Pages 326-343
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24168
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A Monte Carlo code named Mcnaff has been developed and tested for flow rate measurement and general composition determination of a flowing fluid by neutron activation analysis. Specifically, oxygen determination in a flowing fluid is treated, including simulating the emission and transport of neutrons in the fluid, the activation of l6O to 16N, the subsequent flow and dispersion of the 16N in the flow channel, the downstream decay of 16N, and the subsequent detection of the emitted decay gamma rays. This code is very efficient, partly because (a) the continuous single history approach has been taken, which follows a single history from emission of a neutron, through the production and decay of the 16N and the emission of a characteristic gamma ray, and finally to the full energy detection of the gamma ray and (b) the principle of forcing can be and is used throughout so that almost every history results in a partial success. The present Mcnaff code is capable of calculating gamma-ray detection yields per neutron emitted to the same accuracy as an approach by Perez-Griffo, Block, and La hey, which numerically solves the partial differential equations for modeling particle dispersion and diffusion and calculates separately by Monte Carlo both the neutron absorption and gamma-ray detection process. The Mcnaff code is estimated to be about two orders of magnitude faster and should be more convenient to use because all calculations are accomplished in a single step.