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Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Weixiong Zheng, Ryan G. McClarren, Jim E. Morel
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 189 | Number 3 | March 2018 | Pages 259-271
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1407592
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this work, we present a subdomain discontinuous least-squares (SDLS) scheme for neutronics problems. Least-squares (LS) methods are known to be inaccurate for problems with sharp total cross-section interfaces. In addition, the LS scheme is known not to be globally conservative in heterogeneous problems. In problems where global conservation is important, e.g., k-eigenvalue problems, a conservative treatment must be applied. In this study, we propose an SDLS method that retains global conservation and, as a result, gives high accuracy on eigenvalue problems. Such a method resembles the LS formulation in each subdomain without a material interface and differs from LS in that an additional LS interface term appears for each interface. The scalar flux is continuous in each subdomain with the continuous finite element method while discontinuous on interfaces for every pair of contiguous subdomains. The SDLS numerical results are compared with those obtained from other numerical methods with test problems having material interfaces. High accuracy of scalar flux in fixed-source problems and in eigenvalue problems is demonstrated.