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Godzilla is helping ITER prepare for tokamak assembly
ITER employees stand by Godzilla, the most powerful commercially available industrial robot available. (Photo: ITER)
Many people are familiar with Godzilla as a giant reptilian monster that emerged from the sea off the coast of Japan, the product of radioactive contamination. These days, there is a new Godzilla, but it has a positive—and entirely fact-based—association with nuclear energy. This one has emerged inside the Tokamak Assembly Preparation Building of ITER in southern France.
K. N. Schwinkendorf
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 121 | Number 1 | September 1995 | Pages 136-141
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE95-A24135
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Large computer codes have been created in the past to predict the energy release in hypothetical core disruptive accidents (CDA) postulated to occur in liquid-metal reactors (LMRs). These codes, such as SIMMER, are highly specific to LMR designs. More recent attention has focused on thermal-spectrum criticality accidents such as for fuel storage basins and waste tanks containing fissile material. This paper presents results from recent one-dimensional kinetics simulations, performed for a recriticality accident in a thermal spectrum. Reactivity insertion rates generally are smaller than in LMR CDAs, and the energetics generally are more benign. Parametric variation of input was performed, including reactivity insertion and initial temperature.