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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.
Shinji Ebara, Takehiko Yokomine, Akihiko Shimizu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 4 | November 2006 | Pages 538-545
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1277
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
So as to make the most of an available irradiation test volume of the gas-cooled high-flux test module of the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility, the vessel of the test module is supposed to have a rectangular shape, into which specimens can be packed spatially efficiently. There is a large pressure difference of several atmospheric pressures between the inside and the outside of the vessel because gaseous helium flows inside the vessel to control the temperature of the specimens and a low-vacuum condition is kept outside the vessel for safety reasons. This pressure difference is assumed to cause readily the deformation of the vessel wall. Even a slight deformation should be taken seriously because the deformation of the vessel noticeably affects the coolant flow, that is, cooling performance. In this study, we performed elastoplastic finite element analysis for two rectangular vessels of the high-flux test module proposed by FZK and Kyushu University. In addition to the material nonlinearity, by taking into account the geometrical nonlinearity and thermal stress, we could obtain detailed results such as relations between the deformations and the pressure differences.