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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.
Akio Yamamoto, Tsutomu Ikeno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 149 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 175-188
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3588
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this paper, the effect of a pin-by-pin thermal-hydraulic feedback treatment on the core characteristics at a steady-state condition is investigated using a three-dimensional fine-mesh core calculation code. Currently, advanced nodal codes treat the inside of an assembly as homogeneous, and the temperature distribution inside a node is usually ignored. Namely, the fuel temperature is estimated from the assembly average power density, and the moderator temperature is calculated from the nodewise closed-channel model. However, the validity of a flat temperature distribution inside a node has not yet been investigated, because a three-dimensional pin-by-pin whole-core calculation must be done for comparison. A three-dimensional pin-by-pin nodal-transport code for a pressurized water reactor (PWR) core analysis, SCOPE2, was used in this study since it can directly treat the pin-by-pin feedback effect. A whole-core subchannel analysis code was developed to enhance the thermal-hydraulic capability of SCOPE2. The pin-by-pin feedback models for fuel and moderator temperature were established, and their impact on the core characteristics was investigated in a 3 × 3 multiassembly and the whole PWR core geometries. The calculations showed that modeling of the pin-by-pin temperature distribution revealed a negligible effect on core reactivity and only a slight impact on the radial peaking factor. The difference in the radial peaking factor that is exposed by the pin-by-pin temperature modeling is less than 0.005 in the test calculations.