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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.
Iain M. Shepherd, Yannis Drossinos, Christopher G. Benson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 110 | Number 2 | May 1995 | Pages 181-197
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35117
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An extensive database of aerosol experiments exists and has been used for checking aerosol transport codes. Data for fission product vapor transport are harder to find. Some qualitative data are available, but the Falcon thermal gradient tube tests carried out at AEA Technology’s laboratories in Winfrith, England, mark the first serious attempt to provide a set of experiments suitable for the validation of codes that predict the transport and condensation of realistic mixtures of fission product vapors. Four of these have been analyzed to check how well the computer code VICTORIA can predict the most important phenomena. Of the four experiments studied, two are reference cases (FAL-17 and FAL-19), one is a case without boric acid (FAL-18), and the other is run in a reducing atmosphere (FAL-20). The results show that once the vapors condense onto aerosols, VICTORIA can predict their deposition rather well. The dominant mechanism is thermophoresis, and each element deposits with more or less the same deposition velocity. VICTORIA assumes that the physical properties of the aerosol are independent of its composition and that each particle has the same composition. This assumption is justified for these experiments.