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A series of firsts delivers new Plant Vogtle units
Southern Nuclear was first when no one wanted to be.
The nuclear subsidiary of the century-old utility Southern Company, based in Atlanta, Ga., joined a pack of nuclear companies in the early 2000s—during what was then dubbed a “nuclear renaissance”—bullish on plans for new large nuclear facilities and adding thousands of new carbon-free megawatts to the grid.
In 2008, Southern Nuclear applied for a combined construction and operating license (COL), positioning the company to receive the first such license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2012. Also in 2008, Southern became the first U.S. company to sign an engineering, procurement, and construction contract for a Generation III+ reactor. Southern chose Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized water reactor, which was certified by the NRC in December 2011.
Fast forward a dozen years—which saw dozens of setbacks and hundreds of successes—and Southern Nuclear and its stakeholders celebrated the completion of Vogtle Units 3 and 4: the first new commercial nuclear power construction project completed in the U.S. in more than 30 years.
David Friant, David Bernard, Patrick Blaise
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 8 | August 2023 | Pages 1991-2006
Technical papers from: PHYSOR 2022 | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2158679
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Doppler coefficient represents the primary source of passive and instantaneous negative reactivity feedback to limit peak power excursion during reactivity-initiated accidents as well as a nonnegligible negative reactivity source that changes between cold zero-power and hot zero-power conditions. Furthermore, the mechanism behind the Doppler coefficient may also contribute to an increase in the buildup of Pu under normal operating conditions. As such, its treatment is critical in the design and evaluation of the safety and control of nuclear systems. This paper provides a brief overview of the physical source of the Doppler effect through resonance broadening from first principles as well as an exploration of some recent developments in the treatment of elastic scattering in the Monte Carlo codes Tripoli4® and MCNP. This exploration results in a detailed look at the effect different elastic scattering kernels have on the radiative capture, fission, and elastic scattering rates as they directly tie into the calculation of the Doppler coefficient via the six-factor formula. Also provided is some insight into the propagation of the a priori uncertainty of 238U resonance parameters. This work is performed pursuant to the development of a new experimental program to measure the Doppler coefficient in a zero-power reactor both more accurately and to higher temperatures (1500°C to 2000°C) than has been done in the past at the MINERVE facility at Cadarache.