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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.
C. R. Gould, A. I. Hawari, E. I. Sharapov
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 165 | Number 2 | June 2010 | Pages 200-209
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE09-48
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We revisit the determination by Bowman et al. of unusual neutron transport characteristics for a newly fabricated form of graphite [Nucl. Sci. Eng., 159, 182 (2008); Nucl. Sci. Eng., 161, 68 (2009)]. From MCNP modeling and consideration of data from other experiments, we determine revised values for the neutron transport parameters of this graphite. Our reanalysis gives a coherent scattering cross section coh ˜ 4 b at 50 meV, a small-angle neutron scattering cross section sans ˜ 11 to 13 b at 1 meV, and an effective capture cross section a = 5.8 ± 0.5 mb. Scaled to a graphite reference density of 1.60 g/cm3 , we find a diffusion coefficient [overbar D] = 0.94 ± 0.03 cm and a diffusion length L = 47.7 ± 3.7 cm. Apart from the somewhat larger values of a and [overbar D], these are not untypical parameters for graphite. Based on our investigation, the recent experiments and analysis of Bowman et al. do not give evidence for different transport properties for this newly fabricated graphite.