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2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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The two reactors at Dominion Energy’s Surry plant are among the oldest in the U.S. nuclear fleet. Yet when the plant celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023, staff could raise a toast to the future. Surry was one of the first plants to file a subsequent license renewal (SLR) application, and in May 2021, it became official: the plant was licensed to operate for a full 80 years, extending its reactors’ lifespans into 2052 and 2053.
Tuomo Sevón
Nuclear Technology | Volume 197 | Number 2 | February 2017 | Pages 171-179
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT16-108
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The water ingression mechanism can enhance the coolability of a pool of molten corium in containment during a severe accident. A water ingression model was added to the MELCOR code in 2015. The purpose of this work was to test the new model. It was found that the water ingression model performed satisfactorily in core-concrete–interaction experiments in which gas bubbles were released to the melt from decomposing concrete. The new model had little effect in the Small-Scale Water Ingression and Crust Strength (SSWICS) experiments that were done without gas bubbling through the melt. When applied to the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 accident, the water ingression model slowed down concrete ablation by 19% but did not quench the melt. Because the water ingression model was added to MELCOR so recently, the default treatment is still to use multipliers for the boiling heat transfer coefficient and thermal conductivity instead of the proper water ingression model. These default parameters significantly overestimated melt coolability in all the experiments that were calculated.