Advances in Nuclear Science and Technology: v. 9

370 Pages·1976·18.456 MB·English

by  Ernest J. Henley, Jeffery Lewins

Contributors
J. R. Beattie Ehud Greenspan
Margaret K. Butler Naoki Kamegashira
F. R. Farmer John G. Moore
Keiji Naito
Editorial Board
V. S. Crocker K. Oshima
F. R. Farmer A. Sesonske
Paul Greebler H. B. Smets
Norman Hilberry Eugene P. Wigner
K. Wirtz
Contributors
J. R. Beattie Ehud Greenspan
Margaret K. Butler Naoki Kamegashira
F. R. Farmer John G. Moore
Keiji Naito
Editorial Board
V. S. Crocker K. Oshima
F. R. Farmer A. Sesonske
Paul Greebler H. B. Smets
Norman Hilberry Eugene P. Wigner
K. Wirtz
Advances in
Nuclear Science
and
Technology
—: EDITED BY
Ernest J. Henley
Cullen College of Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, Texas
Jeffery Lewins
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London, England
Volume 9 1976
ACADEMIC PRESS
NEW YORK SAN FRANCISCO LONDON
A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
COPYRIGHT © 1976, BY ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR
TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC
OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING, OR ANY
INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT
PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER.
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
Ill Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003
United Kingdom Edition published by
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. (LONDON) LTD.
24/28 Oval Road, London NW1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 62-13039
ISBN 0-12-029309-9
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTRIBUTORS
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contributions begin.
J. R. BEATTIE, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Safety and Reliability
Directorate, Culcheth, Warring ton, Cheshire, England (1)
MARGARET K. BUTLER, Argonne National Labarotory, Ar gönne, Illinois (269)
F. R. FARMER, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Safety and Reliability
Directorate, Culcheth, Warring ton, Cheshire, England (1)
EHUD GREENSPAN, Atomic Energy Commission, Nuclear Research Centre-Negev,
Beer-Sheva, Israel (181)
NAOKI KAMEGASHIRA, Department of Nuclear Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,
Nagoya University, Furo-Cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Japan (99)
JOHN G. MOORE, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Safety and Reliability
Directorate, Culcheth, Warrington, Cheshire, England (73)
KEIJI NAITO, Department of Nuclear Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Nagoya
University, Furo-Cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Japan (99)
vii
PREFACE
The international commitment to nuclear power brings its own international
problems, some of which we have touched on in these Advances, but others,
such as the proliferation of nuclear weapon capability, have too large an ele-
ment of politics, economics, and social science to assess solely within a «tech-
nical framework. The expansion of the nuclear industry, however, in its fuel
preparation and post-irradiation processing as well as in the number of
nuclear power plants, brings to a new pitch the questions of safety that have
rightly been asked from the beginning of this new technology: safety of the
public (at local, national, and international level); safety of the work force in
the industry; safety of the environment against thermal, radiation, and
esthetic pollution; and, equally of merit for consideration, economic safety of
the large capital invested. We are glad, therefore, that two major con-
tributions in the present volume provide both an historic and a philosophic
approach to aspects of the field.
Butler's review of computer applications emphasizes the impetus given in
the United States to that other modern technology, the digital computer, as a
result of the nuclear programs for war or peace, of the 1950s, perhaps the
most substantial "spin-off" from a technical program ever recorded. In
another article, Farmer and Beattie provide a review of the safety philosophy
that was pioneered in the United Kingdom in evaluating risks in nuclear
power plants and that seems to be gaining ground elsewhere as a logically
more sound alternative to the " incredible risk " approach. It is the philosophy
that puts behind it the simplistic hope that "accidents will not happen" and
asks instead to quantify the risks inherent in choosing (or not choosing) a
course of action with its benefits and defects. A great merit of this approach
is its ability to make quantitative comparisons with nonnuclear choices as well
as to guide research and development of acceptable reliability criteria.
The remaining papers in this volume are perhaps more conventional.
Moore's work is also on the field of nuclear safety, but specialized in the use
of Monte Carlo methods for criticality calculations—an area, as evidenced by
continuing accidents in fuel processing plants, where standards of safety and
reliability do not seem to match up to the nuclear power plants themselves.
Greenspan provides a welcome general review of some of the intriguing
modern developments in perturbation theory, a tool of great intellectual sti-
mulus that has created for itself a battery of techniques that might well astonish
IX
X PREFACE
those early practitioners of "danger coefficients" for criticality calculations.
Finally, we reflect the truism that reactors are not built from theory and
reports alone, but are built of material things. We can give an additional wel-
come to the review of ceramic fuels for advanced thermal reactors by Naito
and Kamegashira in that it comes from Japan and extends the international
scope of the series.
As usual, our selection policy has been to present some specific new material
together with reflective reviews of major segments of the fields of nuclear
science and technology. We can thank our authors for their care and effort
which has enabled us to present this ninth volume to an international audience.
JEFFERY LEWINS
ERNEST HENLEY
CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES
Volume 1
Thermodynamic Analysis of Nuclear Power Stations
SEYMOUR BARON
The GBSR: A Graphite Moderated Boiling Water Steam Superheat Reactor
L. S. MIMS AND D. J. STOKER
Radiation-Induced Graft Polymerization
GEORGE ODIAN AND HORACE W. CHANDLER
Diffusion in Uranium, Its Alloys, and Compounds
STEVEN J. ROTHMAN
Performance Characteristics of Large Boiling Water Reactors
G. M. ROY AND E. S. BECKJORD
Economics of Nuclear Power
JOHN E. ULLMAN
Chemonuclear Reactors and Chemical Processing
MEYER STEINBERG
AUTHOR INDEX—SUBJECT INDEX
Volume 2
Reactor Transfer Functions
CESAR SASTRE
Heat Exchanges in Nuclear Power Plants
GEORGE T. LEWIS, JR., MICHAEL ZIZZA, AND PAUL DIRIENZO
The Formation of Free Radicals in Polymers by Radiation, Their Reactions
and Reactivities
M. G. OMEROD
Measurements of Reactor Parameters in Subcritical and Critical Assemblies
IRVING KAPLAN
xi
XÜ CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES
Scattering of Thermal Neutrons from Solids and Their Thermalization near
Equilibrium
L. S. KOTHARI AND V. P. DUGGAL
Some Aspects of the Use of Digital Computers in Nuclear Reactor Design
BERNARD W. ROOS AND WARD C. SANGREN
AUTHOR INDEX—SUBJECT INDEX
Volume 3
The Physics of Pulsed Neutrons
DlMITROS COKINOS
Transient Radiation Effects in Electronics
EDWARD E. CONRAD
Radiation Effects on Inorganic Solids
RAYMOND G. DI MARTINI AND SUEI RONG HUANG
Synthesis Methods in Reactor Analysis
S. KAPLAN
Radiation-Induced Polymerization at Low Temperature
KEICHI OSHIMA AND YONEHO TABATA
Pulsed Neutron Sources
R. H. STAHL, J. L. RUSSELL, JR., AND G. R. HOPKINS
AUTHOR INDEX—SUBJECT INDEX
Volume 4
Gas-Cooled Reactor Technology
H. B. STEWART, C. L. RICKARD, AND G. B. MELESE
Safety and Economic Characteristics of a 100-MWe Fast Sodium-Cooled
Reactor Design
K. P. COHEN AND G. L. O'NEILL
The Doppler Effect in Fast Reactors
R. B. NICHOLSON AND E. A. FISCHER
CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES XÜi
Fast Reactor Meltdown Accidents Using Bethe-Tait Analysis
R. A. MEYER AND B. WOLFE
Optimum Nuclear Reactor Control Theory
JEFFERY LEWINS AND ALBERT L. BABB
Developments in Perturbation Theory
JEFFERY LEWINS
Industrial Applications of Ionizing Radiations
S. JEFFERSON, R. ROBERTS, F. J. LEY, AND F. ROGERS
AUTHOR INDEX—SUBJECT INDEX
Volume 5
Objectives and Design of the Fast Flux Facility
E. R. ASTLEY, L. M. FINCH, AND P. L. HOFMANN
Stability Analysis of Nonlinear Space Dependent Reactor Kinetics
WILLIAM E. KASTENBERG
Methods and Data for Reactor Shield Calculations
FRANCIS H. CLARK
Variational Methods in Nuclear Engineering
S. KAPLAN
Nuclear Power for Space Applications
BERNARD LUBARSKY
A Round-oif Free Solution of the Boltzmann Transport Equation in Slab
Geometry
LAMBROS LOIS AND J. CERTAINE
AUTHOR INDEX—SUBJECT INDEX
Volume 6
The Core Design of the Reactor for the Nuclear Ship "Otto Hahn"
D. BÜNEMANN, M. KOLB, H. HENSSEN, .E. MÜLLER, AND W. ROSSBACH
Stability Analysis of Nonlinear Point Reactor Kinetics
STIG-OLOF LONDEN