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A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
Dong Li, Rao Hao
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 2 | February 2022 | Pages 209-220
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.1968760
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To simulate the complex accident phenomena of a marine reactor, the thermal-hydraulic system code RELAP5 is modified to perform the analysis under ocean conditions. An integrated reactor with a passive residual heat removal system (PRHRS) is modeled by the improved code, and the effects of different ocean motions under a total loss-of-flow accident (LOFA) and a loss-of-heat-sink (LOHS) accident are analyzed with respect to safety characteristics. The results indicate that for LOFA, the primary loop can form an effective natural circulation to cool the core, and for LOHS, the PRHRS can effectively remove the residual heat from the core to ensure the core safety. The results also show that heaving motion accelerates the drop of the first-loop temperature and enhances the heat transfer capacity of the PRHRS. Inclining motion reduces the natural circulation flow in the core. A rolling condition causes fluctuations in the mass flow rate, the variations of which are not strictly sinusoidal, and increasing the rolling period also improves the heat exchange capacity of the PRHRS.