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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.
Xiaoli Wu, Jian Deng, Liqiang Hou, Lili Liu, Dan Zhang , Hongsheng Yuan (Nuclear Power Inst of China)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 584-589
MAAP5 is capable of simulating the whole response of a PWR nuclear power plant under severe accident conditions. An analysis of the severe accident scenarios in a PWR by MAAP5 were carried out. It was assumed that the severe accident was initiated by an unusual small-break loss-of-coolant accident (SBLOCA) at the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) lower head and the failure of high-pressure injection system (HPIS) in a PWR by using MAAP5 were carried out. Different break sizes with and without manual depressurization of the reactor coolant system (RCS) were studied. The results showed that without manually depressurization the RCS, reactor core underwent slow heatup and completely melted and eventually failed the RPV lower head at the primary system pressure of 6.87 MPa for 0.4-inch-break LOCA and 2.71 MPa for 1.0-inch-break LOCA. On the other hand, timely manually opening the pressurizer (PZR) safety valves (SVs) was an effective mitigation measure to recover the core coolabilty by cold-leg accumulator injection system (AIS) and low-pressure injection system (LPIS). Besides, reasonably manually opening the steam generators (SGs) SVs while keeping the auxiliary feedwater work also helped to depressurize the RCS and prevent the severe accident. Both of the two mitigation measures successfully prevented the core from complete melt, but the latter one is preferable to the former one provided no steam generator tube rupture took place.