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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.
William L. Kuhn, Richard D. Peters, Scott A. Simonson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 63 | Number 1 | October 1983 | Pages 82-89
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT83-A33304
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A leach model is presented for a commonly studied commercial nuclear waste glass, PNL 76-68. Boron release is taken to be a monitor of the reaction rate of the glass, while the actual releases of many other glass constituents into solution during static tests are evidently controlled by solubilities. The reaction rate determined in this way passes from linear to parabolic kinetics over the duration of the experiments analyzed, and boron concentrations in solution are found to be a function of the product of time and surface area-to-solution volume ratio. This behavior is found to be explained well by assuming the reaction is impeded by resorption of reaction products onto the reacting surface. Two model parameters are found as functions of temperature by fitting the model to published data. It is concluded that the accumulation of silica near the glass surface in a waste package in a repository could limit the rate of reaction of the glass, but not that the reaction would cease as silica reaches its solubility limit in solution.