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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.
Amir N. Nahavandi
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 14 | Number 3 | November 1962 | Pages 272-286
doi.org/10.13182/NSE62-A26217
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A digital computer analysis of the loss-of-coolant accident in the primary system of a multicircuit core nuclear power plant in the event of a complete severance of a pressure or jumper tube is presented. The time-dependent mass, momentum, and energy balance differential equations are expressed in finite difference form and solved numerically on an IBM-7090 digital computer together with the equations of state, system boundary conditions, and constraints. The system mass flow rate, pressure, and enthalpy distribution are calculated together with the other important system properties as functions of time during the transient operation following the break. The application of the analysis to the Carolinas-Virginia Tube Reactor indicates that the loss-of-coolant accident could lead to flow starvation in the reactor core and steam formation in the primary pump with subsequent core damage if no corrective action were taken. The flow starvation and steam formation problems are solved by the operation of a high pressure, high capacity emergency injection pump with fast starting characteristics.