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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
Ji-Hwan Hwang (Chung-Ang Univ), Min Ho Lee, In Cheol Bang (UNIST), Dong-Wook Jerng (Chung-Ang Univ)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 650-656
A concept of the ERVC (External Reactor Vessel Cooling) can be applied to the Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR), by using air instead of water as a coolant. The RVCS, which is a system to maintain integrity of concrete structures, can be used for reactor exterior surface cooling. The heat removal by RVCS operation affects and affected by the natural circulation inside sodium pool. Thus, understanding the natural circulation inside sodium pool is important for RVCS performance prediction. In this paper, we numerically investigated similarity laws to figure out the applicability of water tests to actual sodium condition using a commercial CFD code, STAR-CCM+. In this study, 4 different scales, 1/20, 1/10, 1/8 and 1/5 were investigated. In every case the volumetric heat flux of core was identical. For numerical simulation, the geometry and configuration of Prototype Gen-IV Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor (PGFSR) developed in KAERI is chosen as reference, and modeled. For comparison, each similarity laws were compared in terms of temperature field. The simulation and comparison results show that by preserving modified Bousinessq number and Peclet number when reducing the test, the temperature field of reactor can be reproduced. However, the test is too small, the flow resistance due to internal structure acts dominantly, disturbing the flow. Therefore, for better result, such flow resistance which can be occurs at small-scaled experiment, should be taken into account.