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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.
John Sorensen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 83 | Number 3 | December 1988 | Pages 383-395
Technical Paper | Fifth International Retran Meeting / Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34151
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The possibility of instabilities under certain conditions of operation has been a special concern for boiling water reactors (BWRs). A stability analysis is performed to demonstrate that the total system and its primary components are inherently stable over the allowable operating envelope. The current methodology used by BWR fuel vendors for core reactivity and channel hydrodynamic stability is based on frequency domain analysis. RETRAN is the Electric Power Research Institute time domain system transient analysis code that is widely used by domestic and foreign utilities. RETRAN allows the reactor system to be modeled in a highly accurate manner including all important phenomena (linear and nonlinear) associated with anticipated and unforeseen conditions of operation. RETRAN is demonstrated to be adequate for the analysis of total plant stability, core reactivity stability, and channel hydrodynamic stability. All key phenomena are adequately modeled by RETRAN and core reactivity analyses have been shown to agree well with measured plant data.