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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.
Sadia Khalid, Idrees Ahmad, Awais Zahur
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 9 | September 2019 | Pages 1175-1184
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1580530
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The long-term, safe, and reliable operation of a reactor coolant pump is vital for the safety of a nuclear reactor. In the case of a station blackout or power failure to the pump, the inertia of rotating parts of the pump should provide sufficient pumping capacity or flow rate to remove decay heat to ensure the safety of the reactor. An accurate flow coastdown analysis is required for the design and manufacture of reactor coolant pumps. In this paper a mathematical model is formulated to study flow coastdown of CHASNUPP-2, which is a pressurized water reactor. Frictional losses in the pump are also incorporated in the model to get accurate results. Two important parameters of the model are inertia of the pump impeller and inertia of the coolant, which are related to each other in the form of effective energy ratio. The effective energy ratio is made variable in order to accurately model the flow coastdown transient. The model is solved numerically to get flow coastdown curves and the comparison of the theoretical and experimental results shows a good agreement between them.