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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.
Yuh-Ming Ferng, Bau-Shei Pei, Tuan-Ji Ding
Nuclear Technology | Volume 109 | Number 3 | March 1995 | Pages 398-411
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35088
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During the past years, a number of reduced-scale test facilities have been constructed to investigate the physical phenomena of transients or accidents occurring in nuclear power plants. Since the behavior of a nuclear power plant is complicated, it is quite impossible for a small-scaled facility to simulate all the physical phenomena during the transient process. But, by way of proper scaling, most of the important aspects of transient behavior can be simulated. Calculations using RELAP5/MOD3 investigate whether most of the key thermal-hydraulic phenomena observed in the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research Integral System Test (IIST) facility can be expected in a prototype plant. When compared with experimental data, the calculated results of two different scale models show reasonable agreement with the natural circulation transients. The scale-up capability of RELAP5/MOD3 is demonstrated by simulating the single-phase and two-phase natural circulation transients. Also, the scaling distortions in the heat transfer areas of the IIST facility do not strongly distort the thermal-hydraulic behavior of experimental data.