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EDF fleet update has encouraging news for U.K. nuclear industry
The EDF Group’s Nuclear Operations business, which is the majority owner of the five operating and three decommissioning nuclear power plant sites in the United Kingdom, has released its annual update on the U.K. fleet. UK Nuclear Fleet Stakeholder Update: Powering an Electric Britain includes a positive review of the previous year’s performance and news of a billion-dollar boost in the coming years to maximize output across the fleet.
Roberto Passalacqua, Didier Tarabelli, Claude Renault
Nuclear Technology | Volume 116 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 283-292
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35284
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Large-scale experiments show that whenever a loss of coolant accident occurs water pools are generated. Stratification of steam-saturated gas develops above growing water pools causing a different thermal hydraulics in the subcompartment where the water pool is located. Hereafter, the LWR Aerosols Containment Experiment (LACE) LA4 experiment, performed at the Hanford Engineering Development Laboratory, will be studied; this experiment exhibited a strong stratification, at all times, above a growing water pool. JERICHO and AEROSOLS-B2 are part of the Ensemble de Systèmes de Codes d’Analyse d’Accident des Réacteurs à Eau (ESCADRE) code system, a tool for evaluating the response of a nuclear plant to severe accidents. These two codes are used here to simulate respectively the thermal hydraulics and the associated aerosol behavior. Code results have shown that modeling large containment thermal hydraulics without taking into account the stratification phenomenon leads to large overpredictions of containment pressure and temperature. If the stratification, above the water pool, is modeled as a zone with a higher steam condensation rate and a higher thermal resistance (that is acting as a barrier to heat exchanges with the upper and larger compartment), ESCADRE predictions match experimental data quite well. The stratification region is believed to be able to affect aerosol behavior; aerosol settling is improved by steam condensation on particles and by diffusiophoresis and thermophoresis. In addition, the lower aerosol concentration throughout the stratification might cause a nonnegligible aerosol concentration gradient and consequently a driving force for the motion of smaller particles toward the pool.