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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.
Zhiee Jhia Ooi, Vineet Kumar, Caleb S. Brooks
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 8 | August-September 2020 | Pages 598-619
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1732123
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The static correlations from RELAP5 and TRACE as well as the interfacial area transport equation (IATE) are benchmarked for flashing flow with selected cases from a recently published experimental data set. The RELAP5 correlation is able to predict the interfacial area concentration more accurately than the TRACE correlation. The one-group decoupled IATE, supplied with experimental void fraction, shows overprediction of interfacial area concentration, especially at low-pressure conditions. Additionally, the one-group IATE is solved simultaneously with the void transport equation where at low pressures, the accuracy of the predicted interfacial area concentration improves even with the void fraction being underpredicted. However, as the pressure increases, the improving accuracy of the predicted void fraction leads to an overprediction of the interfacial area concentration. The two-group IATE is also benchmarked, first using the interfacial mass generation model from RELAP5 and TRACE and then with a model derived through a mass-energy balance approach. The accuracy of the two-group IATE is observed to be sensitive to the choice of the heat transfer length scale and Nusselt number correlations.