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Energy and Environment
Published in T.M. Aggarwal, Environmental Control in Thermal Power Plants, 2021
Unlike the Three Mile Island accident, the much more serious Chernobyl accident did not increase regulations affecting Western reactors since the Chernobyl reactors were of the problematic RBMK design only used in the Soviet Union, for example lacking “robust” containment buildings. Many of these RBMK reactors are still in use today. However, changes were made in both the reactors themselves (use of a safer enrichment of uranium) and in the control system (prevention of disabling safety systems), amongst other things, to reduce the possibility of a duplicate accident.
Sustainable energy: Technology, industry, transport and agriculture
Published in Lucjan Pawłowski, Zygmunt Litwińczuk, Guomo Zhou, The Role of Agriculture in Climate Change Mitigation, 2020
The explosion in unit 4 in the power plant in Chernobyl on 26 April 1986 (Jackson 1996) and melting of the nuclear core was to a large extent related to the type of reactors used (RBMK or channel-type graphite-moderated reactors).
Force-System Resultants and Equilibrium
Published in Richard C. Dorf, The Engineering Handbook, 2018
breeder reactor (LMFBR) and high-temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR). The former Soviet block countries operate two Russian designs, a PWR-like reactor called the VVER and a graphite-moderated, water-cooled thermal reactor, the pressure-tube graphite reactor (PTGR), also called the RBMK. The RBMK is the reactor type that experienced the Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor accident.
Initial Exploratory Reactor Physics Assessment of Nonconventional Fuel Concepts for Very Compact Small Modular Reactors Using Hydroxides as Coolants and/or Moderators
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2022
One modern reactor concept that uses molten salts solely as a coolant is the pebble-bed fluoride-salt high-temperature reactor (PB-FHR) concept, as discussed in Refs. 4 and 9. This 900-MW(thermal)/410-MW(electric) reactor concept operates with a peak outlet fluoride salt coolant temperature of 700°C, permitting an efficiency of nearly 46% when used in combination with a combined Brayton/Rankine cycle. An SMR variant of the PB-FHR is the small advanced high-temperature reactor3 (SmATHR), which operates at 125 MW(thermal), with a core height of ~400 cm and an effective core diameter of ~206 cm. However, the scientists working on the development of the PB-FHR and the SmATHR (Refs. 3, 4, and 5) have recognized that it may be advantageous for the fuel design in an MSCR to revert to a fuel string/bundle/assembly design in a fuel channel with an external moderator made of graphite. Such a concept would be analogous to the fuel channel design approach used in both CANada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU)–type PT-HWRs (Ref. 1), the advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) used in the United Kingdom,18 the Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalnyy or “high power channel-type reactor” (RBMK) such as those used in the Russian Federation,27 and several early reactor prototypes from the 1950s and 1960s that used fuel bundles/fuel clusters in fuel channels with different types of coolants (such as helium, CO2, water, organic compounds, sodium, and others) in combination with different external moderators (such as graphite, heavy water, light water, zirconium hydride, and others) that were physically separated from each other.16,17
Assessment of Parameters of Radioactive Aerosol Release Through Air Duct System Using the SOCRAT/V3 Code
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2018
R. V. Arutyunyan, D. A. Pripachkin, K. S. Dolganov, S. V. Tsaun, S. N. Krasnoperov, D. V. Aron, D. Yu. Tomashchik, E. L. Serebryakov, S. V. Panchenko, A. V. Shikin
It was demonstrated for RBMK reactor installations14 that depending on the accident type and scenario, the amount of aerosol particles deposited on the internal surface of the steam lines can fluctuate from 5% to 50% of the mass of particles that got into the steam-and-water communications. Studies of radioactive aerosol deposition in the case of accidents at VVER-1000 reactors show that the mass of the aerosols deposited on pipelines can reach tens of percent of the mass for radioactive substances released from the fuel.15
From “Inherently Safe” to “Proliferation Resistant”: New Perspectives on Reactor Designs
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
The reactor designers from NIKIET, one of the leading design and construction bureaus at the time, believed they had a solution.oNIKIET stands for Nauchno-issledovatel’skii konstruktorskii institut energotekhniki (Scientific Research and Design Institute of Energy Technologies). Created in 1952, it is now named after its first director Nikolai A. Dollezhal’. Based on their vast experience with “industrial reactors,” code for reactors that produced plutonium for nuclear weapons, they proposed a second design for the country’s fledgling nuclear sector: a graphite-moderated, water-cooled BWR, the so-called RBMK, short for reaktor bolshoi moshchnosti kanal’nyi/kipiashchii (high-power channel/BWR). In contrast to the VVER, this model could be assembled mostly onsite and didn’t require a complicated factory-manufactured pressure vessel.6 Furthermore, the RBMK relied on well-established supply industries, but on different branches from those supporting the VVER, thus allowing it to be produced with little impact on the VVER line.7,53,54 And, while the VVERs at the time were built with small power capacities [210 and 365 MW(electric)] and slowly increased in output to 440 MW(electric), the RBMK entered the scene as a 1000 MW(electric) “giant.”pThe first VVER-1000 came online only in 1980, some seven years after the first RBMK. NIKIET’s engineers argued that they had ample experience with so-called “dual-use” reactors whose main purpose was to produce as much weapon-grade plutonium as possible. These reactors had been modified to provide heat and electricity for nearby towns as byproducts.qOne of the famous ones was the “Second Ivan” (EI-2). The Soviet delegation at the second Geneva conference reported on the startup of this “Siberian nuclear power plant” in 1958. NIKIET claimed that modifying the graphite-water design to entirely civilian machines was within reach, and they offered the RBMK as a supplement to the already approved line of VVERs.