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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.
Michitsugu Mori
Nuclear Technology | Volume 148 | Number 1 | October 2004 | Pages 12-24
Technical Paper | RETRAN | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3544
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two advanced boiling water reactors (ABWRs) whose electric output power is 1356 MW have been commercially operated since 1996 and 1997 by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) in Japan. Features of an ABWR are reactor internal pumps (RIPs) placed in the lower plenum and downcomer, peripherally bottom-mounted on the reactor pressure vessel - which should require different modeling from the jet pumps and two recirculation pumps in the primary outer-loop recirculations of BWR-5.Efforts focused on modeling and simulating the ABWR with transient analyses by the point-kinetics model with the local reactivity modified by local importance weighting of the squared nodal power during start-up tests using the RETRAN-3D code, version MOD003 without three-dimensional kinetics. The core and reactor pressure vessel including ten ABWR RIPs and the steam lines were modeled, and simulations were carried out for the cases of the one-pump trip test, the changing-setpoint tests, the main-steam-isolation-valve-closure test, and the generator load rejection test with bypass.The analytical simulation with RETRAN-3D/MOD003 well reproduced the measured data of the ABWR in operation for the RIP trip and the transient tests and could demonstrate its validation for applying to the ABWR with modeling of RIPs.