Nuclear Energy Agency Online Bulletin

March 2000

Covers new material for February 2000


The monthly bulletin only lists new and updated material. It is distributed by e-mail to registered users of the Nuclear Energy Agency's online services and is available online at www.oecd-nea.org/general/mnb/. The bulletin is sent monthly by e-mail to subscribers. If you are not already a subscriber, use the registration form to subscribe.


NEW PUBLICATIONS

These publications can be ordered at www.oecd.org/publications

Reduction of Capital Costs of Nuclear Power Plants
ISBN 92-64-17144-4
Price: FF240, US$38, DM72, £24, ¥4 400
106 pages

A French translation of this publication is also available:
Réduction des coûts en capital des centrales nucléaires
ISBN 92-64-27144-9
Prix : FF240, US$38, DM72, £24, ¥4 400
110 pages

Monitoring and Data Management Strategies for Nuclear Emergencies
ISBN 92-64-17168-1
Price: FF160, US$26, DM48, £16, ¥2 850
96 pages

A French translation of this publication is also available:
Statégies de surveillance et de gestion de données dans les urgences nucléaires
ISBN 92-64-27168-6
Prix : FF160, US$26, DM48, £16, ¥2 850
96 pages

Free publications (via E-mail: nea@oecd-nea.org)

Prediction of Neutron Embrittlement in the Reactor Pressure Vessel:
VENUS-1 and VENUS-3 Benchmarks
265 pages
www.oecd-nea.org/science/docs/2000/nsc-doc2000-5.pdf

Calculations of Different Transmutation Concepts:
An International Benchmark Exercise
157 pages
www.oecd-nea.org/science/docs/2000/nsc-doc2000-6.pdf

Data Bank (leaflet)
La banque de données (dépliant)


PRESS COMMUNIQUES

  • Reducing Capital Costs of Nuclear Power Plants
    Available in English and French at www.oecd-nea.org/news/2000/2000-02.html
  • The Nuclear Energy Agency will Organise an Internationa Workshop on the Safety of Nuclear Fuel Cycle Facilities
    Available in English and French at www.oecd-nea.org/news/2000/2000-03.html

    NUCLEAR SAFETY

    The list of all Nuclear Safety documents produced since 1973 is now available at www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/indexcsni.html

    Two important meetings related to NEA nuclear safety activities were held at the end of 1999:

    The 11th Meeting of the Committee on Regulatory Activities on November 29-30 1999, and the 27th Meeting of the Committee on Safety of Nuclear Istallations (CSNI) on December 1 - 3, 1999.

    The main purpose of both meetings was to review the activities carried out by these Committees in 1999 and to approve the activities proposed for the year 2000. In total more than 40 reports and technical opinion papers were produced and a number of workshops were held in this area in 1999.

    One of the most important outcomes of the CSNI meeting was the approval of the CSNI Strategic Plan www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/2000/csni-r2000-3.pdf . The reasons for developing the Plan were to ensure that the work of the CSNI is aligned with the NEA Strategic Plan, and to maximise the efficiency of its work in view of the decreasing R&D budgets in Member countries. The basic objectives to be achieved by the plan are better top-down direction of the programme of work, and maintenance of an effective network of technical experts.

    The plan specifies a new CSNI mission and identified the strategic areas of future activities. In addition, the plan included a number of organisational recommendations, including CSNI restructuring.

    Both Committees approved a number of a workshops and seminars to be organised in future:

    · CSNI Workshop on Instrumentation and Monitoring of Concrete Structures, Brussels, March 22-23, 2000 (see below)

    · CSNI Workshop on Advanced Thermal-hydraulic and Neutronic Codes, Current and Future Applications, Barcelona, April 10-13, 2000

    · Safety of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, 29th to 31st May 2000, Japan, Joint Workshop with CSNI, CNRA, CRPPH, and NSC. See www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/reports/final.pdf

    · CSNI Specialist Meeting on Safety Performance Indicators, Madrid, Spain, October 17-19, 2000

    · CSNI Workshop on Errors of Commission in Probabilistic Safety Assessment, November 2000, United States

    · CNRAWorkshop on Investing in Trust: Nuclear Regulators and the Public, Paris, 29 November-1 December 2000
    See www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/reports/investing.pdf

    · CSNI Workshop on Human Reliability Data Base (HRAD), Spring 2001, Europe

    · CSNI Workshop on Precursor Analysis, Spring 2001, Europe


    A OECD Workshop on the Instrumentation and Monitoring of Concrete Structures, sponsored by the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), will be held on 22-23 March 2000. The Workshop is hosted by AVN/Belgatom/Electrabel/Tractebel and will take place at the offices of Tractebel Engineering.

    NPP concrete structures have been built to provide significant margins against the effects of accidental events. Instrumentation and monitoring are the channels to assess their actual state and follow their time evolution. The objective of the workshop is an assessment of the capability of current instrumentation and monitoring systems to describe the actual state of structures and detect ageing problems. The workshop will focus on experience and detect trends for the future.

    The Workshop will have three technical sessions devoted to presentations of issues related to Instrumentation and Monitoring. They will be followed by a fourth session devoted to a discussion of the material presented and to the formulation of workshop conclusions.

    Session 1 - State of the Art and Regulatory Considerations: The objective is to emphasise difficulties encountered, evidence of robustness, and recommendations for improvement and also to give a regulatory perspective on Instrumentation and Monitoring of concrete structure as part of safety assessments.

    Session 2 - Detecting Ageing: Instrumentation gives valuable information regarding the in-service performance of containments as constructed which can be used to confirm the original design assumptions and that their performance is as intended. Many containments have shown some degradation during plant life, either in the concrete itself or in the steel reinforcement or liner. It is of primary importance that instrumentation should be able to detect ageing problems and identify performance trends. Also of particular interest are dynamic instrumentation relevant to ageing and non-nuclear experience of instrumentation in large and complex structures.

    Session 3 - Trends for the Future: This session will focus on future developments in the Instrumentation and Monitoring field. Can new technologies ( e.g. optic fibres) help with safety assessment? Can instrumentation on real structures be used to validate Finite Element codes? How best can we use monitoring in conjunction with periodic condition assessment?

    Session 4 - Panel Discussion.

    NUCLEAR LAW

    Back issues of the Nuclear Law Bulletin (Numbers 1-60), in English and French, are now available in .pdf format on the NEA Web site, in English at: www.oecd-nea.org/law/nlb/index.html and in French at: www.oecd-nea.org/law/nlbfr/index.html.
    You may view these files using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Future editions of the Nuclear Law Bulletin/Bulletin de droit nucléaire will be made available on the Web site approximately one year after their publication.


    NUCLEAR SCIENCE

    Workshops

    From 24-25 January, 2000 the Fourth Workshop on the Pressurised Water Reactor
    Main Steam Line Break Benchmark (PWR-MSLB-4) was held in Paris
    .

    The benchmark uses plant data from the B&W TMI-1 reactor, 2772 MWt, about 900 MWe power, equipped with two Once Through Steam Generators (OTSG). The general purpose of the activity is to reach a common understanding concerning the coupling between thermal-hydraulics and neutronics, with emphasis on 3-D modeling. The considered benchmark was proposed and specified by PSU, who have co-operated with GPU and NRC. The activity has been subdivided into three main phases:

    1. analysis of the transient with a thermal-hydraulic system code coupled to a point neutron kinetics model: the purpose of this step is to reach an understanding of the problem among the participants with reference mainly to the modeling of the system, including interpretation of the supplied/available information;

    2. analysis of the core performance only, when a 3-D neutron kinetic model is coupled with the thermal-hydraulic code: the main purpose is to evaluate the hypotheses at the basis of the coupling, e.g. looking at their impact on the results;

    3. analysis of the entire system performance with the coupled codes: the purpose is to evaluate the importance of the 3-D neutronics modeling in the considered cases, and to establish realistic and assessed methods (i.e. inclusive of codes, nodalisations and use of codes) suitable for safety, licensing and design analyses.

    The results of this study are being published in 4 reports.

    A kick-off session was devoted to the new proposed BWR Turbine Trip benchmark for further validation of coupled 3D core/plant system codes. This benchmark problem is based on experimental data (Peach Bottom). A first benchmark workshop dedicated to this benchmark is scheduled for the 8-9 November 2000.

    Workshop on Preserving Reactor Physics Experiments Data, 18-19 May, 2000, KFKI, Budapest,
    Contact: Janos Gadó KFKI Budapest - E. Sartori programs@oecd-nea.org

    Shielding Aspects of Accelerators, Targets and Irradiation Facilities, SATIF-5, 17-20 July 2000 OECD/NEA, Paris,
    Contact P. Vaz vaz@oecd-nea.org

    Seminar on Fission Gas Behaviour in Water Reactor Fuels, 26-29 -September 2000, Cadarache, France,
    Contact: Maxy Noé, Maxy.Noe@cea.fr

    Conferences

    1. Physor 2000, 7-11 May 2000, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, http://www.ans.org/store/i_700281

    2. International Conference on "Supercomputing in Nuclear Applications SNA'2000" , 4-7 September 2000, Tokyo, Japan, JAERI http://wwwndc.jaea.go.jp/Mtgs/2000/index00.html

    3. International Conference "Monte Carlo 2000"- Advanced Monte Carlo for Radiation Physics, Particle Transport Simulation and Applications", 23-26 October 2000, IST, the Lisbon School of Engineering.

    New NSC Publications:

    Prediction of Neutron Embrittlement in the Reactor Pressure Vessel: VENUS-1 and VENUS-3 Benchmarks
    This is the final report of two international blind intercomparison exercises performed to examine the current computation techniques used in NEA Member countries for calculating fast neutron doses to reactor components. arious methodologies and different nuclear data were applied to predict neutron dose rates in the Belgian two-dimensional VENUS-1 and three-dimensional VENUS-3 configurations for comparison with measured data.

    This report provides the detailed results from the two benchmarks. The exercise revealed that three-dimensional neutron fluence calculations provide results that are significantly more accurate than those obtained from two-dimensional calculations. Performing three-dimensional calculations is technically feasible given the power of today's computers.
    Available at: www.oecd-nea.org/science/docs/pubs/nea2128-venus.pdf

    Calculations of Different Transmutation Concepts: An International Benchmark Exercise
    The final report of the benchmark on different transmutation concepts has now been published. The benchmark investigates the physics of complex fuel cycles involving reprocessing of spent PWR reactor fuel and its subsequent re-use in different reactor types based on PWRs, fast reactors and an accelerator-driven system (ADS). This report gives the analysis of results of the 15 solutions provided (six for the PWRs, six for the fast reactor and 3 for the accelerator case).

    As a follow-up to this benchmark, a further ADS benchmark is being undertaken to resolve discrepancies identified in the present benchmark (e.g., considerable differences in calculated initial k-eff and burn-up reactivity swings). This benchmark can be extended later on for more complex investigations such as beam trip transient behavior of ADS systems.
    Available at: www.oecd-nea.org/science/docs/2000/nsc-doc2000-6.pdf

    These reports are available free of charge.


    DATA BANK

    Training Courses:

    The following courses are scheduled for 2000:

    1. MCNP and Visual Editor Training Course, 14-17 March 2000, Pellissippi State Technical Community College near Knoxville, Tennessee, Contact: Randy Schwarz, MS K8-34, P. O. Box 999, Richland, WA 99352 (509-372-4042, fax: 509-372-6421, e-mail: randy.schwarz@pnl.gov
    2. Advance Training Course on MCNP-4C, 10-14 April 2000, Imperial College, London, UK, Contact: Enrico Sartori sartori@oecd-nea.org
    3. Training Course on Nuclear Criticality Safety Using KENO-VI - Handling, Transportation and Storag Spent Fuel -(includes KENO-3D), 15-19 May 2000, Issy les Moulineaux, France, Contact: Steven Bowman & E. Sartori sartori@oecd-nea.org
    4. "MCNP Introductory Training Course," 3-7 July 2000, University of Stuttgart, Germany, Contact: Enrico Sartori, sartori@oecd-nea.org
    5. MCNP and Visual Editor Training Course, 9-12 October 2000, Richland, Washington. Contact: Randy Schwarz, MS K8-34, P. O. Box 999, Richland, WA 99352 (509-372-4042, fax: 509-372-6421, e-mail: randy.schwarz@pnl.gov url: http://www.pnl.gov/eshs/software/ved.html)

  • Computer Program Services
    New software packages available from the Data Bank:
    A page giving the list of all new programs in the last 12 months can be found at www.oecd-nea.org/tools/abstract/new .
    13-MAR-2000 IAEA1214 TRIGAP,TRIGA REACTOR FLUX,POWER,BURNUP CALC (Arrived)
    10-MAR-2000 CCC-0641 NESTLE,FEW-GRP N DIFFN FOR STEADY-STATE & TRANSIENT PROB BY NEM  (Tested)
    09-MAR-2000 NEA-0919 SRIM,STOPPING POWER & RANGE OF IONS IN MATTER (Arrived)
    07-MAR-2000 DLC-0134 ZZ RADDECAY,DECAY DATA_LIB FOR RADIOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT  (Tested)
    28-FEB-2000 ESTS0154 KIVA3,TRANSIENT MULTICOMPONENT 2- & 3-D REACTIVE FLOWS WITH FUEL SPRAYS (Arrived)
    24-FEB-2000 NEA-1210 ZZ HATCHES,DATA LIB FOR RADIO_CHEM MODELLING (Arrived)
    16-FEB-2000 PSR-0330 STARCODES,STOPPING_POWER & RANGES FOR ELECTRONS,PROTONS,HE  (Tested)
    09-FEB-2000 NEA-1622 IFPE/OSIRIS,4 PWR RODS IRRADIATED IN THE CEA OSIRIS REACTOR (Arrived)
    07-FEB-2000 NEA-1596 IFPE/AECL-BUNDLE,FISSION GAS RELEASE AND BURNUP ANALYSIS,PHWR FUEL (Arrived)
    04-FEB-2000 NEA-1553 SINBAD-FUSION NEUTRONICS BENCHMARK EXPERIMENTS  (Tested)
    01-FEB-2000 NEA-1615 IFPE/CEA-DEFECT FUEL, EXPERIMENTS IRRADIATED AT CEA GRENOBLE (Arrived)
    01-FEB-2000 NEA-1620 RODBURN, A SIMPLE NEUTRONICS CODE FOR FUEL ANALYSIS (Arrived)
        

    Instructions on retrieving material* from the NEA:
    • By World-Wide Web
      open URL www.oecd-nea.org/
      www.oecd-nea.org/
    • By ftp (File Transfer Protocol)
      Ftp to ftp.nea.fr, login as anonymous.

    * Note: Scientific database access is only available to residents of OECD/NEA Data Bank member countries.

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