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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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INL makes a case for eliminating ALARA and setting higher dose limits
A report just released by Idaho National Laboratory reviews decades of radiation protection standards and research on the health effects of low-dose radiation and recommends that the current U.S. annual occupational dose limit of 5,000 mrem be maintained without applying ALARA—the “as low as reasonably achievable” regulatory concept first introduced in 1971—below that threshold.
Noting that epidemiological studies “have consistently failed to demonstrate statistically significant health effects at doses below 10,000 mrem delivered at low dose rates,” the report also recommends “future consideration of increasing this limit to 10,000 mrem/year with appropriate cumulative-dose constraints.”
Rohan Biwalkar, Sola Talabi (Pittsburgh Technical)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 989-1002
An Integrated Small Modular Reactor is an Integral Pressurized-Water Reactor (iPWR) with a relatively high surface-area-to-volume ratio. It has been hypothesized that a higher surface-area-to-volume ratio aids passive aerosol decontamination through various deposition phenomena, namely thermophoresis, diffusiophoresis and gravitational settling. Accordingly, particle deposition was studied within a range of thermal-hydraulic parameters, namely pressure, temperature and A/V ratios, in the presence as well as the absence of steam. It was found that presence of steam, an increasing thermal gradient between the Reactor Vessel (RV) and Containment Vessel (CV) walls, an increasing A/V ratio, and an increasing initial pressure enhance particle deposition. As part of this study, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model with the capability to predict particle deposition, particle velocities and steam condensation was developed using User-Defined Functions for the 3-D CFD commercial code CONVERGE. It was found that the CFD results qualitatively agreed with the experimental data in the context of predicting particle deposition with respect to varying thermal-hydraulic parameters. Overall, the aerosol removal mechanisms are sensitive to varying thermal-hydraulic parameters.