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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
Constantine P. Tzanos, B. Dionne
Nuclear Technology | Volume 179 | Number 3 | September 2012 | Pages 382-391
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A14170
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To support the safety analysis of the conversion of the BR2 research reactor to low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel and extend the validation basis of the RELAP code for the analysis of the conversion of research reactors from highly enriched (HEU) fuel to LEU, the simulation of BR2 tests A/400/1, C/600/3, and F/400/1 was undertaken. These tests are characterized by loss of flow initiated at different reactor power levels with or without loss of system pressure, reactor scram, flow reversal, and reactor cooling by natural circulation. This work presents the RELAP analysis of tests C/600/3 and F/400/1 and comparison of code predictions with experimental measurements for peak cladding temperatures during the transient at different axial locations in an instrumented fuel assembly. The simulations show that accurate representation of the power distribution, especially after reactor scram, between the fuel assemblies and the moderator/reflector regions is critical for the correct prediction of the peak cladding temperatures during the transient. Detailed MCNP and ORIGEN simulations were performed to compute the power distribution between the fuel assemblies and the moderator/reflector regions. With these distributions the predicted peak cladding temperatures are in good agreement with experimental measurements.