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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.
Gary R. Smolen, Raymond C. Lloyd, Hideyuki Funabashi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 107 | Number 3 | September 1994 | Pages 304-325
Technical Paper | Nuclear Criticality Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A35010
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of critical experiments was performed with mixed plutonium-uranium nitrate solutions in two cylinders and in a variable thickness slab tank. The solution concentrations ranged from 12 to 174 g Pu/ℓ with Pu/Pu+U ratios of 0.5, 0.4, and 0.2. The criticality data were used to validate two versions of the SCALE computer code system (SCALE-4 and SCALE-2). Calculations were performed with the 27-energy-group cross-section library, derived from the Evaluated Nuclear Data File B-Version IV. The average calculated keff for all geometries (39 experiments) is 1.006 (σ = 0.006), calculated with SCALE-4, and 1.004 (σ = 0.007), calculated with SCALE-2. Overall, the range of calculated keff varied from 0.989 to 1.019. These experiments covered a wide range of parameters, with variations in physical, chemical, and neutronic parameters.