The High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) is particularly attractive due to its capability of producing high temperature helium gas and inherent safety characteristics. These interesting aspects make HTGR worthy of discussion on the future advanced reactors. The Japanese interest in the HTGR has resulted in the construction of the High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (the HTTR) at the...

Modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR) has distinct advantages in the sense of the inherent safety, economy property, high electricity efficiency, potential usage for hydrogen production, and etc. Chinese design of MHTGR, named as High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor-Pebble bed Module (HTR-PM), based on the technology and experiences of the HTR-10, is under the standard design phase...

The spectacular growth in computer hardware over the last quarter century and the accompanying advances in software development have resulted in the availability of reliable numerical tools for addressing safety issues in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). The first step forward was undertaken in the 1970s with the development of system codes using the two-fluid model approach [1], such as RELAP-5 [2...

The periodic or non-periodic test and maintenance activities in nuclear power plants (NPPs) are essential for stable power production and the sustainment of the plant safety. However, due to NPP system complexity and human limitation in cognition and action, these activities may also have the potential to induce unwanted and unanticipated reactor trip events and may render critical systems unav...

In May 1975 Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory issued a preliminai.. report on a study of Fast Reactor Safety Test Facilities. The study addressed itself to three closely related tasks. 1. A review of the current understanding of fast reactor safety with the aim of identifying important areas of uncertainty which cannot be adequately resolved using analysis, out of pile and/or existing in-pile fa...

This paper gives the perspective on fission product behavior and source term research of the Project Nuclear Safety (PNS) at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center (KfK). It tries to demonstrate the conceptional background of the KfK core melting program, which has been started in 1973, and which is scheduled to be terminated by 1986. The paper also summarizes the main findings of the SASCHA pro...

The Bush Administration has made the expansion of nuclear power generation a centerpiece of its domestic energy policy. However, the White House has not addressed the practical issue of how to overcome the nearly three-decade-long aversion among U.S. electric utilities to investing in new nuclear plants. In today's deregulating market, utilities will not build new nuclear power plants unless th...

It is widely recognized that safety of nuclear power plants is a problem of great relevance for society. If it is not properly managed, the increase in power and complexity of the plants can lead to a catastrophic release of energy and dangerous materials and pollute the environment. To prevent this to happen, the nuclear community always put significant efforts into finding new ways to improve...