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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Bart J. Daly, Francis H. Harlow
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 77 | Number 3 | March 1981 | Pages 273-284
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE81-A19838
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A numerical study was performed to derive a model of countercurrent steam-water flow in large horizontal pipes, with application to the emergency core cooling (ECC) system of a pressurized water reactor. The purpose of the study was to provide data from which simple correlations could be obtained to describe mass, momentum, and energy exchange between the phases during hot leg ECC injection. It was assumed that steam, driven by a pressure drop from the upper plenum to the ECC injection port, flows counter to the subcooled ECC water. Several series of calculations were performed to determine the sensitivity of the ECC flow velocity at the entrance to the reactor vessel to the pressure drop, for several values of the mass and momentum exchange coefficients used in the numerical method. The results were consistent with those obtained from solution of the mixture equation, which did not involve interfacial drag or condensation.