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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.
R. C. Lloyd, E. D. Clayton, L. E. Hansen, S. R. Bierman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 18 | Number 3 | June 1973 | Pages 225-230
Technical Paper | Chemical Processing | doi.org/10.13182/NT73-A31297
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of criticality experiments was performed on plutonium nitrate solutions in slab geometry. The solutions contained plutonium at concentrations ranging between 58 and 412 g Pu/liter for material with three different isotopic contents: 4.6, 18.4, and 23.2 wt% 240Pu. Acid molarities varied from 1.6 to 5.0. The experiments were performed with a variable thickness slab-type vessel of 42-in. height and width, whose thickness could be adjusted throughout a range of 3 to 9 in. The experimental vessel was used with and without a water reflector and also with a 1-in.-thick Plexiglas reflector. The critical experiment data from the finite slabs were corrected to yield values of critical thicknesses for one-dimensional infinite slabs, i.e., slabs of finite thickness but of infinite height and width. Analytical corrections, based on experimental data, were subsequently used to correct the critical infinite slab thicknesses for materials extraneous to the plutonium solutions, such as the effect of the stainless-steel vessel walls and room return neutrons. The analysis provided values for clean one-dimensional assemblies that were then used as an integral check of calculational methods using cross sections from the ENDF/B-II data file. The computed values of keff for these “clean assemblies” ranged between 0.988 and 1.040; the values increased somewhat with increasing concentration.