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Casting a wider net
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
Recently, a colleague related to me a conversation overheard at an industry forum in which ANS was referred to as a group of “academics” who were of limited use in expanding the workforce needed to deliver a nuclear resurgence.
While not new, this criticism still gets me hypertensive when I hear it. Many still see ANS as a bunch of academics and “labbies” disconnected from the day-to-day commercial nuclear race.
Yet, I also understand the charge is not entirely without foundation. Pop your head into a technical session at an ANS national conference, and you’re bound to hear academics presenting research that, to nontechnical ears, sounds esoteric.
Zachary Welker, Annalisa Manera, Victor Petrov, Paolo Balestra
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 10 | October 2023 | Pages 1577-1591
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2134673
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Air ingress measurements using the 1/20th-scaled Helium Air Ingress gas Reactor Experiment (HAIRE) facility show key geometric variables of interest and their effect on air ingress in small- and medium-sized breaks in High Temperature Gas cooled Reactors. These variables include but are not limited to break diameter, break angle, and break wall thickness. Differing wall thicknesses for the same break diameter can have order-of-magnitude changes to the air ingress rate, which is a key figure of merit in the air ingress accident scenario. Additionally, different break sizes can change the importance of the angle in the break scenario. With smaller breaks, the flow will not transition from intermittent flow, to countercurrent flow, to diffusive flow as the break rotates from vertically upward toward vertically downward. This would lead to less variability with smaller breaks, which in turn would make the accident scenario more predictable for smaller-sized breaks.