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WIPP: Lessons in transportation safety
As part of a future consent-based approach by the federal government to site new deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, local communities and states that are considering hosting such facilities are sure to have many questions. Currently, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only example of such a repository in operation, and it offers the opportunity for state and local officials to visit and judge for themselves the risks and benefits of hosting a similar facility. But its history can also provide lessons for these officials, particularly the political process leading up to the opening of WIPP, the safety of WIPP operations and transportation of waste from generator facilities to the site, and the economic impacts the project has had on the local area of Carlsbad, as well as the rest of the state of New Mexico.
Byoung-Uhn Bae, Jae-Bong Lee, Yu-Sun Park, Jong-Rok Kim, Seok Cho, Kyoung-Ho Kang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 5 | May 2021 | Pages 680-691
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1796078
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To investigate thermal-hydraulic phenomena during an intermediate-break loss-of-coolant accident (IBLOCA) and evaluate the effect of a direct vessel injection (DVI) line break, an integral effect test using the Advanced Thermal-hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation (ATLAS) test facility was conducted as the B3.2 test item of the international cooperation project Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)–ATLAS Project Phase 2 (ATLAS-2) (OECD-ATLAS2). The initial and boundary conditions for the test were determined referring to the Advanced Power Reactor 1400 MW(electric) (APR1400) as a prototype with three-level scaling methodology. A single-failure criterion was applied to the operation of the safety injection pump (SIP), and four safety injection tanks (SITs) were available to cool down the reactor coolant system. In the test result, as the break nozzle was located at the DVI line, the clearance of the upper downcomer could make an effective flow path of the steam toward the break and quench the reactor core. Maximum cladding temperature was measured before clearance of the upper downcomer. Coolant inventory in the reactor pressure vessel was maintained due to the safety injection without any further core heatup. So, it was proved that the current design of the safety systems in APR1400 had a sufficient long-term cooling capability with a single SIP during a DVI line break IBLOCA. The ATLAS test data were utilized to evaluate the prediction capability of the thermal-hydraulic system code Multi-dimensional Analysis of Reactor Safety KINS Standard (MARS-KS) for a DVI line break IBLOCA scenario. The calculation result with the uncertainty propagation analysis using the PArallel computing Platform IntegRated for Uncertainty and Sensitivity analysis (PAPIRUS) toolkit proved that major phenomena such as uncovery of the core or intermittent injection of the SIT flow could be reasonably predicted by the MARS-KS code.