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Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
László Szabados
Nuclear Technology | Volume 145 | Number 1 | January 2004 | Pages 28-43
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3458
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Paks nuclear power plant is equipped with pressurized water reactors of the VVER-440/213 type. These plants have a number of special features, namely, six-loop primary circuit, horizontal steam generators, loop seal in both hot and cold legs, safety injection tank setpoint pressure higher than secondary pressure, etc. As a consequence of the special design solutions, the transient behavior of such a reactor system is different from the usual pressurized water reactor system behavior. To study the transient behavior of these plants, the PMK-2 integral-type facility, a thermal-hydraulic model of the Paks nuclear power plant, was designed and constructed.A short description of the specific design solutions of the VVER-440/213-type plants is given with the modeling aspects and similarity criteria applied to the design of the PMK-2 facility. Since the startup of the facility in 1985, 48 experiments have been performed primarily in an international framework with the participation of several experts from European and overseas countries to study one- and two-phase natural circulation, loss-of-coolant accidents, special plant transients, and experiments in support of the accident management measures. The results of several experiments illustrate the system effects of special design solutions and the effectiveness of bleed-and-feed accident management measures. A brief commentary on the thermal-hydraulic system code validation is provided, and conclusions are offered.