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Metz on Harold Denton: Memories of a life in nuclear safety
Metz
A number of years ago, historian and writer Chuck Metz Jr. was at the Bush’s Visitor Center in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains when he ran into former Nuclear Regulatory Commission official Harold Denton and his wife. Metz was at the visitor center, which opened in 2010 and is now a tourist hotspot, because, as he explained to the Dentons at the time, he had overseen the development of its on-site museum and had written a companion coffee-table history book.
The chance meeting turned into a friendship and a fruitful collaboration. Denton, who in 1979 was the public spokesperson for the NRC as the Three Mile Island-2 accident unfolded, had been working on his memoir, but he was stuck. He asked Metz for help with the organization and compilation of his notes. “I was about to retire,” Metz said, “but I thought that exploring the nuclear world might be an interesting change of pace.”
Denton passed away in 2017, but by then Metz had spent many hours with his fast friend and was able to complete the memoir, Three Mile Island and Beyond: Memories of a Life in Nuclear Safety, which was published recently by ANS. Metz shared some of his thoughts about Denton and the book with Nuclear News. The interview was conducted by NN’s David Strutz.
Albert G. Gu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 177 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 157-175
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | dx.doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13363
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper introduces a combined micro and macro (CMM) parameter perturbation theory for boiling water reactor (BWR) lattice design and optimization, which involves a large number of independent design variables and a large scale of variations. With this theory, engineers are able to meet the challenges from both accuracy and speed requirements. This theory was applied to the BWR fuel assembly lattice design in AREVA. A BWR fast lattice simulator (FLS) and a BWR fuel assembly lattice optimizer (BALO) were built and assisted engineers working on the lattice design and optimization. In addition to the discussion of this theory, the BALO/FLS calculation results are used to show that this theory can meet both speed and accuracy criteria of design as well as cover the large design range. Moreover, the results also show that two major perturbation issues in BWR lattice design and optimization, i.e., the large swing of average lattice enrichment and the thermal neutron black absorber's distribution as burnable poison can be resolved with the CMM perturbation theory. Finally, it is pointed out that the macro parameter perturbation combined with the micro parameter perturbation is extremely important to the accuracy.
