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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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INL makes a case for eliminating ALARA and setting higher dose limits
A report just released by Idaho National Laboratory reviews decades of radiation protection standards and research on the health effects of low-dose radiation and recommends that the current U.S. annual occupational dose limit of 5,000 mrem be maintained without applying ALARA—the “as low as reasonably achievable” regulatory concept first introduced in 1971—below that threshold.
Noting that epidemiological studies “have consistently failed to demonstrate statistically significant health effects at doses below 10,000 mrem delivered at low dose rates,” the report also recommends “future consideration of increasing this limit to 10,000 mrem/year with appropriate cumulative-dose constraints.”
Mingjun Wang, Annalisa Manera, Victor Petrov, Suizheng Qiu, Wenxi Tian, G. H. Su
Nuclear Technology | Volume 203 | Number 2 | August 2018 | Pages 194-204
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1446656
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In detailed previous work by the authors, an innovative decay heat removal (DHR) system has been proposed and designed for the Integral Inherently Safe Light Water Reactor (I2S-LWR). The current paper studies the inadvertent actuation of one DHR system train during I2S-LWR normal operation due to a false signal or operator action. The RELAP5 code is used to perform a one-dimensional study, and important thermal-hydraulic characteristics, including primary loop coolant flow rate, pressure, temperature, DHR primary-side flow rate, and coolant temperature, are achieved during this transient. Then, a detailed computational fluid dynamics simulation utilizing STARCCM+ is carried out to investigate the coolant mixing characteristics in the downcomer and lower plenum and obtain the local thermal-hydraulic conditions at the reactor core inlet. It is found that as a consequence of inadvertent DHR actuation, the maximum overcooling at the reactor core inlet is about 3 K, which would not result in significant reactivity insertion. Furthermore, a more severe transient of inadvertent DHR operation with intermediate loop break is studied, and the results show that this would not lead to more significant overcooling to the I2S-LWR core compared with inadvertent DHR operation without intermediate loop break. This work is an indispensable supplement for DHR system comprehensive assessment in the I2S-LWR project.