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MIT professor develops method to verify compliance with Outer Space Treaty
Danagoulian
Areg Danagoulian of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is proposing a mechanism for verifying that Earth-orbiting satellites are in compliance with the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons in space. Danagoulian’s “concept and feasibility study,” titled “Verification of the Outer Space Treaty with cosmic protons,” was published recently in the journal Nature.
Yoshiro Nishioka, Satoru Kuboya, Yuya Takahashi, Hideki Horie, Mika Tahara (Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corp), Tadashi Fujii (Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, Ltd), Takafumi Tsuji (Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc.)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 223-228
The passive debris cooling system provides a means to stably hold and cool the molten core (debris) dropped from the reactor vessel by the heat resistant material laid on the bottom of the containment vessel. As a heat resistant material, high melting point and highly corrosion-resistant oxide is laid on the pedestal and water is injected afterwards to suppress MCCI by the molten core. In the past research, although knowledge about molten core and concrete has been acquired, knowledge about interaction between molten core and heat resistant material is insufficient. Therefore, element tests on heat resistant materials were conducted, various heat resistant materials were screened, and molten core - heat resistant material interaction model was constructed using the obtained findings. Using the constructed model, we evaluated the erosion / heat transfer behavior of the heat resistant material assuming the bottom of the BWR / Mark - II type containment vessel at the time of severe accident and confirmed the MCCI suppression effect by the passive debris cooling system.