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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.
C. K. Sanathanan, J. C. Carter, F. Miraldi
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 23 | Number 2 | October 1965 | Pages 130-137
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A28137
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In Part I of this series, the authors have developed mathematical techniques to investigate the dynamics of coolant circulation in boiling-water nuclear reactors. This paper is an attempt to apply those techniques to various specific situations. A natural-circulation loop with a single heated channel is considered first. Dependence of the degree of stability upon the steady-state profile of the channel heat flux and the channel length are investigated. The influence of the pressure drops in the downcomer and at the channel inlet upon the transient two-phase flow is studied. The steady-state perturbations in the void fraction and velocity due to a small perturbation in the channel heat flux are predicted. The findings of the present study compare favorably with those obtained by the simplifying assumption made by the earlier investigators that the slip ratio is a constant along the channel length. The more interesting system with two or more channels operating in parallel with a common downcomer is considered next. The strength of the coupling between the dynamics of the flows through the channels increases with the pressure drop in the common downcomer, and this phenomenon is considered quantitatively. Results obtained theoretically are substantiated by comparison with those obtained through elaborate numerical methods and previous observations.