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North American construction is back—smaller and faster—at OPG’s Darlington
“The nuclear renaissance is real here,” said Ontario Power Generation’s Subo Sinnathamby on May 8, one year to the day after OPG secured a final investment decision to build the first of four planned BWRX-300 reactors at its Darlington nuclear power plant, and shortly after the new reactor’s foundation was lifted into place. “We got our license to construct in April and our [final investment decision] in May, and we’ve been off to the races since.”
Keith Searson, Fabrice Fleurot, Andrew Cooper, Pat Cowan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 175 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 259-263
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 16th Biennial Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division / Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12297
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A computer-aided design (CAD) import and tracking system, OiNC, has been developed that is currently being incorporated into the MONK and MCBEND criticality and shielding codes. The system enables analysts to take advantage of the advanced geometry modeling capabilities provided by the solid CAD modelers Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks. Various tracking acceleration techniques are implemented in order to reduce calculation time, including the full or partial automatic conversion of the CAD model to constructive solid geometry (CSG) form. For the criticality benchmark model detailed here, the overall calculation run time for a CAD-based geometry was found to be just 14% longer than an equivalent text-based CSG model. OiNC uses analytical surface descriptions, with full NURBS support, avoiding the approximations and problems associated with meshing. However, meshed models can still be imported and tracked, enabling shielding and criticality calculations to be performed, for example, on impact simulated finite element models.