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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.
Mikio Sakai, Toshihiro Yamamoto, Minoru Murazaki, Yoshinori Miyoshi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 149 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 141-149
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3586
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In conventional criticality evaluations of nuclear powder systems, effects of particulate behavior were not considered. In other words, it is difficult to take into account the particle motion in the criticality evaluations. We have developed a novel criticality evaluation code to resolve this problem. The criticality evaluation code, coupling a discrete element method simulation code with a continuous-energy Monte Carlo transport code, makes it possible to study the effects of the particulate dynamics on criticality. This criticality evaluation code is applied to the mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel powder agitation process. The criticality evaluations are performed while mixing the MOX fuel powder and an additive powder in a stirred vessel to investigate the effects of the powder free surface deformation and the particulate mixture state on the effective multiplication factor. The evaluation results reveal that the effective multiplication factor decreases due to the powder boundary deformation while it increases as the mixture condition of MOX powder and Zn-St powder is close to homogeneous.