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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Optimizing nuclear plant outages: Data analytics tools and methods for enhancing resilience and efficiency
Nuclear power plant refueling outages are among the most complex phases in a plant’s operational cycle.1 During these outages, tens of thousands of activities, including maintenance and surveillance, are conducted simultaneously within a short timeframe. Typically lasting three to four weeks, these operations involve large crews of contractors with diverse skill sets performing tasks ranging from testing and surveillance to maintenance. Outages may extend longer if major backfitting or modernization projects are planned. Consequently, plant outages are expensive, incurring significant operational costs, such as contractor labor and equipment, as well as the loss of generation while the plant is off line. This can easily cost a plant operator more than $1 million a day. Therefore, there is a constant need to mitigate the economic impact on plants by reducing the frequency, duration, and risks associated with these outages.2,3
James K. Garner, Mohamed A. Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 837-847
Liquid-Metal Blankets and Magnetohydrodynamic Effects | Proceedings of the Seveth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Reno, Nevada, June 15–19, 1986) | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24842
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The work reported here attempts to: 1) define limits for the design windows for liquid metal breeders and coolants with various structural materials in various tokamak fusion reactors, and 2) quantify the impact of uncertainties in these limits on the design window. MHD pressure drop and heat transfer models are developed and used to quantify the effects of varying several tokamak reactor and blanket design parameters and materials properties. Uncertainties in the present pressure drop equations and calculational methods are also considered. Calculations are used to evaluate the impact of the coolant inlet temperature on the thermal cycle efficiency. An evaluation of the limits of uncertainty gives results ranging from a promising blanket candidate to a severely restricted design window, that would probably exclude self-cooled liquid metal blankets for large tokamaks from consideration. The major uncertainties in the design window result from the current lack of understanding of pressure drop and heat transfer in strong magnetic fields.