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Securing the advanced reactor fleet
Physical protection accounts for a significant portion of a nuclear power plant’s operational costs. As the U.S. moves toward smaller and safer advanced reactors, similar protection strategies could prove cost prohibitive. For tomorrow’s small modular reactors and microreactors, security costs must remain appropriate to the size of the reactor for economical operation.
Bingjing Su
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 137 | Number 3 | March 2001 | Pages 281-297
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-A2191
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The numerical stability, equilibrium diffusive limit, and accuracy of the variable Eddington factor (VEF) methods and flux-limited diffusion methods for radiation transport calculations are considered. The diffusive limit analysis proves that three VEF closures and their associated flux-limiters retain full first-order accuracy in the equilibrium diffusion limit while achieving the correct propagation speed in the optically thin streaming limit. The stability analysis reveals that the flux-limited diffusion methods are unconditionally stable, but the VEF equations with an arbitrary nonlinear closure can be numerically unstable for certain commonly used differencing schemes. However, regular solutions to the VEF equations are obtainable by Godunov-type schemes. Numerical comparisons among various solutions for a test problem show that flux-limited diffusion methods are only slightly less accurate than their corresponding VEF methods, and the Minerbo VEF method and the Minerbo flux-limited diffusion method are in general more accurate than other approximations.