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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.
Motoo Fumizawa, Tomoaki Kunugi, Makoto Hishida, Mikio Akamatsu, Sadao Fujii, Minoru Igarashi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 110 | Number 2 | May 1995 | Pages 263-272
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35124
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A three-dimensional thermal-hydraulic code using boundary-fitted coordinates systems has been developed to predict incompressible flows with complex geometries and large variations of physical properties. This code has been applied to a buoyancy-driven exchange flow in an enclosed space consisting of an upper and a lower hemisphere connected with a circular vertical pipe. The computational results have been compared with experiments. It was found that the computed heat transfer rate was smaller than that obtained from the experimental correlation in a single hemisphere at large Rayleigh number. This may be attributed to the effect on the flow behavior of a large variation of gas properties. Unsteady and asymmetric flow patterns such as observed in the experiments were numerically obtained in the vertical pipe.