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NRC reorganization update: Changes will begin this summer
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is moving forward with its plans to reorganize around three core business lines: new reactors, operating reactors, and nuclear materials and waste. In order to do that, the agency will establish two new offices: the Office of Advanced Reactors (OAR) and the Office of the Chief Nuclear Reactor Inspector (CNRI).
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.