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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.
Francesc Reventós, José Sánchez-Baptista, Alberto Pérez Navas, Pablo Moreno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 90 | Number 3 | June 1990 | Pages 294-307
Technical Paper | RELAP/MOD2 / Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT90-A34395
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The thermal-hydraulic analysis group at Asociación Nuclear Ascó has prepared a model of the plant using RELAP5/MOD2. Protection and control sys-tems have been added as well as a kinetic model in order to accurately analyze plant transients. A new system to record process information collected by plant instrumentation is being installed and will provide a more accurate follow-up of operational and incidental transients of the plant. The current recording system provides adequate information in terms of safety and operation, but there are some interpretation problems when it is used to validate a thermal-hydraulic model. Under these conditions, the selection of transients to assess has been the most important step on qualifying the model. Once a steady-state calculation is achieved, six actual transients are selected to validate the model. From this analysis, it is concluded that the level of qualification of the model is sufficient to validate the predictions of the behavior of the plant under such situations. This process will continue for other transients to broaden the capabilities of the model.