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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
Y. Kukita, H. Nakamura, K. Tasaka, C. Chauliac
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 99 | Number 4 | August 1988 | Pages 289-298
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE99-289
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Natural circulation experiments were conducted in a large-scale (1/48 scale in volume) full-height simulator of a Westinghouse-type pressurized water reactor. This facility has two steam generators each containing 141 full-size U-tubes of 9 different heights. Transition of the natural circulation mode was observed in the experiments as the primary side mass inventory was decreased. Three major circulation modes were observed: single-phase liquid natural circulation, two-phase natural circulation, and reflux condensation. For all these circulation modes, and during the transitions between the modes, the mass flow distribution among the steam generator U-tubes was significantly nonuniform. The longer U-tubes indicated reversed flow at higher primary side mass inventories and also tended to empty earlier than the shorter U-tubes when the primary side mass inventory was decreased.