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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.
Si Y. Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 104 | Number 1 | October 1993 | Pages 64-75
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34870
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The upper limit to countercurrent flow, namely, flooding, is important to analyze the reactor coolability during an emergency cooling system (ECS) phase as a result of a large-break loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) such as a double-ended guillotine break in the Savannah River Site (SRS) reactor system. During normal operation, the reactor coolant system utilizes downward flow through concentric heated tubes with ribs, which subdivide each annular channel into four subchannels. In this paper, a new flooding correlation has been developed based on the analytical models and literature data for adiabatic, steady-state, one-dimensional, air-water flow to predict flooding phenomenon in the SRS reactor assembly channel, which may have a countercurrent air-water flow pattern during the ECS phase. In addition, the correlation was benchmarked against the experimental data conducted under the Oak Ridge National Laboratory multislit channel, which is close to the SRS assembly geometry. Furthermore, the correlation has also been used as a constitutive relationship in a new two-component two-phase thermal-hydraulics code FLO WTRAN-TF, which has been developed for a detailed analysis of SRS reactor assembly behavior during LOCA scenarios. Finally, the flooding correlation was applied to the predictions of critical heat flux, and the results were compared with the data taken by the SRS heat transfer laboratory under a single annular channel with ribs and a multiannular prototypic test rig.