China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Desalination
Published in P.K. Tewari, Advanced Water Technologies, 2020
Nuclear energy has potential to deal with the carbon footprint, as it provides low- carbon desalination. It can take the form of heat/electricity producing fresh water from seawater. The pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR)-based nuclear power plant uses natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as moderator. It operates at about 4 megapascal (MPa) steam pressure and 250°C steam temperature. As the enthalpies of steam available at the entrance to the high-pressure (HP) turbine of a pressurized heavy water reactor-based nuclear power plant (NPP) are lower than with a fossil fuel-based conventional power plant, the specific steam consumption in the nuclear power station is higher. This means more steam is available from nuclear power plants that could be gainfully utilized for thermal desalination (Table 5.4).
Force-System Resultants and Equilibrium
Published in Richard C. Dorf, The Engineering Handbook, 2018
The commercial application of nuclear energy followed closely on the military release of nuclear energy in the nuclear weapons developed during World War II. The first commercial nuclear power plant was completed in the late 1950 s, and there are presently (in 2002) 103 operating nuclear power plants in the U.S., generating 20% of the national electricity supply. Worldwide there are 436 operating nuclear power plants, with 13 countries obtaining more than one-third of their electricity from nuclear power, including France, Belgium, Sweden, Ukraine, and South Korea. The principal types of commercial nuclear power systems in use include the pressurized water reactor (PWR) and the boiling water reactor (BWR). These two reactor types comprise over 80% of the current operating power reactors. A third type of power reactor is the pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR), typified by the Canadian-designed CANDU reactor series. Reactor designs being considered for future applications include the liquid metal fast
Neutron Slowing Down Theory, Neutron Moderators, and Reactor Coolants
Published in Robert E. Masterson, Introduction to Nuclear Reactor Physics, 2017
The two coolants used in thermal water reactors are light water and heavy water. Light water is the same as ordinary water, but it is more highly purified to remove any minerals that can corrode the components of the NSSS. Heavy water is the same as light water except that each hydrogen atom in the water molecule is replaced by a heavier hydrogen atom that has an additional neutron attached to it. Heavy water has the symbol D2O, and light water has the symbol H2O. The “D” in this case refers to a specific isotope of hydrogen called deuterium. The nuclear properties of deuterium are discussed in Appendix C, and its physical properties are discussed in Section 8.20. We will have more to say about the process of heavy water production at the end of the chapter. Reactors that use heavy water to moderate fission neutrons are extremely attractive in less technologically developed countries because one does not need a uranium enrichment plant to build a commercial power reactor. Reactors that are moderated by heavy water can run on natural uranium alone. Neutronically, this is possible because heavy water absorbs fewer thermal neutrons than light water does. Hence, neutron economy in a heavy water reactor is generally better than it is in a light water reactor that uses natural uranium fuel.
Post-Neutron Mass Yield Distribution in the Epi-Cadmium Neutron–Induced Fission of 238Pu
Published in Nuclear Science and Engineering, 2023
H. Naik, R. J. Singh, S. P. Dange, W. Jang
The yield fission products in the neutron-induced fission of actinides are important to carry out mass and charge distribution to explain the mechanism of nuclear fission.[1–3] In particular, post-neutron mass yield distribution is significant for several reasons such as (1) understanding fission fragment properties, (2) nuclear data and modeling, (3) nuclear forensics and safeguards, and (4) fundamental nuclear physics. Besides these, the yields of fission products are needed for the decay heat calculation[4] and thus are important for the design of conventional and advanced reactors. Conventional reactors such as the light water reactor or the boiling water reactor have enriched uranium as a fuel whereas the heavy water reactor (HWR) has natural uranium as fuel. On the other hand, in the advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR),[5,6] 232Th-233U is the fuel in which 233U is the fissile element. In accelerator-driven subcritical systems (ADSs),[7–10] long-lived minor actinides (237Np, 240Pu, 241Am, 243Am, and 244Cm) are the fuel and are used for their incineration. The 232Th-233U fuel in connection with ADSs[7–10] is also one of the possibilities for power generation besides transmutation of long-lived fission products and incineration of long-lived minor actinides to solve the problem of radioactive waste. Thus, the concept of the energy amplifier in the hybrid system is based on the thorium fuel cycle and a spallation neutron source in ADSs.
Development of the Assembly-Level Monte Carlo Neutron Transport Code M3C for Reactor Physics Calculations
Published in Nuclear Science and Engineering, 2020
Anek Kumar, Umasankari Kannan, S. Ganesan
The pressurized heavy water reactor30 (PHWR) is a pressure tube–type reactor with heavy water as moderator and coolant, and natural uranium dioxide as fuel. The fuel bundle consists of a 19-rod cluster. Using the developed Monte Carlo code, k-infinity (kinf) is calculated for a 220-MW(electric) PHWR rod fuel cluster in the cold condition assuming that fuel, coolant, and moderator temperatures are all the at same temperature, 25°C. The specification of the 19-rod fuel cluster is presented in Table VII. The details of this cluster can be found in Ref. 30. The 19-rod fuel cluster is shown in Fig. 6. We have simulated the same cluster also by the deterministic neutron transport theory code CLUB (Refs. 31 and 32) using the 172-energy group WIMSD nuclear data library based on ENDF/B-VII.0 point data for the kinf with reflective boundary condition. The value of kinf for this cluster using CLUB is 1.14125 (Ref. 25). The same test problem is also simulated using the developed M3C code using a pointwise nuclear data set based on ENDF/B-VII.0. The value of kinf is found to be 1.13971 0.00086, which can be considered in good agreement with the previous value of kinf calculated from the deterministic code CLUB. The comparison with CLUB is done for curiosity and historical purposes as the WIMSD convention–based CLUB code has several physics approximations as compared to a Monte Carlo code starting with a basic evaluated nuclear data file. These approximations in WIMSD physics include multigroup treatment, treatment of (n,xn) cross sections as negative absorption, truncation of anisotropy in the treatment of cross sections, an upper energy limit of 10 keV for resonance self-shielding, and intermediate resonance approximation, etc. Therefore, the results by a multigroup approximation should not be used to validate a Monte Carlo code. The blind comparison is presented, in the Indian context, merely for historical purposes and these sample comparison results should not be generalized.