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Christmas Light
’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house
No electrons were flowing through even my mouse.
All devices were plugged by the chimney with care
With the hope that St. Nikola Tesla would share.
Paul B. Abramson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 35 | Number 1 | August 1977 | Pages 87-96
Technical Paper | Reactor Siting | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31852
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the very unlikely event of a loss-of-flow accident in a liquid-metal fast breeder reactor being accompanied by complete failure to scram, the reactor could go prompt critical, generating a large amount of neutronic heat on a millisecond time scale. We find that fuel-to-steel heat transfer has a minimal influence upon the neutronic energy deposition during the prompt burst but that it can play an important role in material behavior in later stages of the hypothetical core disruptive accident. Furthermore, results obtained indicate that calculations of thermodynamic potential energy through adiabatic expansion to one atmosphere are conservative if performed at the end of the prompt burst and that fuel-to-steel heat transfer may significantly reduce the available work energy within the next 20 ms.