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The human factor in licensing and operating the next generation of nuclear plants
As human factors specialists working at the intersection of human performance and nuclear operations, we are witnessing one of the nuclear sector’s most significant transitions in decades. The emergence of small modular reactors, microreactors, and other advanced designs is reshaping the industry’s landscape. Digital instrumentation and controls, passive safety systems, and increased automation are creating opportunities for greater safety margins and more flexible operation. These same features also fundamentally redefine what it means to “operate” a nuclear plant. Interactions among human roles, automation, and passive systems shape how people maintain awareness, exercise judgment, and intervene when necessary. These developments affect both operational realities and the regulatory foundations on which nuclear safety is built.
Woan Hwang, Ho Chun Suk, Won Mok Jae
Nuclear Technology | Volume 95 | Number 3 | September 1991 | Pages 314-324
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT91-A34580
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A comprehensive fission gas release model is developed by considering the behavior of multiple bubble sizes on the fuel grain boundary in terms of relevant physical parameters. This model takes into account bubble migration and coalescence; critical bubble size, which depends on the thermal gradient on the grain boundary; and the lenticular shape of the bubbles. Booth’s classical diffusion theory is directly adopted in the modeling of intragranular fission gas behavior. To consider the bubble drift due to the thermal gradient, those bubbles that exceed the critical bubble size are assumed to be left on the grain boundary and to migrate along the thermal gradient until they encounter free voidages. Use of this model in the KAFEPA code, which predicts the absolute magnitude and the trend of the gas release depending on power history, gives better agreement with the experimental data than the predictions of the model in the ELESIM code, which considers only a single bubble size at the grain boundary.