Integration of Reactor Design, Operations, and Safety
Integration of reactor physics and engineering sciences into nuclear power plant design focusing on designs that are projected to be used in the first half of this century. Topics include materials issues in plant design and operations, aspects of thermal design, fuel depletion and fission-product poisoning, and temperature effects on reactivity. Safety considerations in regulations and operations such as the evolution of the regulatory process, the concept of defense in depth, general design criteria, accident analysis, probabilistic risk assessment, and risk-informed regulations. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
Fall 2006
This course integrates studies of engineering sciences, reactor physics and safety assessment into nuclear power plant design. Topics include materials issues in plant design and operations, aspects of thermal design, fuel depletion and fission-product poisoning, and temperature effects on reactivity, safety considerations in regulations and operations, such as the evolution of the regulatory process, the concept of defense in depth, General Design Criteria, accident analysis, probabilistic risk assessment, and risk-informed regulations.
Readings
- CEA Nuclear Energy Division. “Future Nuclear Energy Systems R&D Strategy in France.” April 12, 2005
- Xu, Mi. “Status and Prospects of Sustainable Nuclear Power Supply in China.” Proceedings of GLOBAL 2005. Tsukuba, Japan: October 9-13, 2005, Paper 511.
- “Strategy for the Development of Power Engineering in Russia for the First Half of the 21st Century: Principal Provisions.” Ministry of Atomic Power Engineering of the Russian Federation . Moscow, 2000.
- “Millennium Summit.” Excerpt from Address Made by President of Russian Federation V. V. Putin at UN Summit. September 6, 2000.
- Adamov, Y. O. “Nuclear Power May Get Its Second Wind in the 21st Century.” Nuclear News (November 2000): 38-42.
- Nocera, Joseph. “On Oil Supply, Opinions Aren’t Scarce.” New York Times , September 10, 2005.
- Ferroni, P., M. Fratoni, and N. Todreas, et al. “Feasibility of Improving BWR Performance Using Hydride Fuel.” Paper 6241 in Proceedings of ICAPP ‘06 . Reno, NV: USA, June 4-8, 2006.
- Fratoni, M., and E. Greenspan. “Optimal Hydride Fueled BWR Assembly Designs.” Advances in Nuclear Analysis and Simulation , PHYSOR 2006 . Vancouver, BC: Canada, September 10-14, 2006.
- Brewer, H. D., and K. S. Canady. “Probabilistic safety assessment support for the maintenance rule at Duke Power Company.” Reliability Engineering & System Safety 63 (1999):243-249.
- Wald, Matthew L. “Committed to Coal, and in a Hurry, Too.” New York Times , November 7, 2006, p. C1.
- The following sections in Korb, L. J., ed. Metals Handbook . 9th ed. Volume 13, Corrosion . Materials Park, OH: ASM International, 1987. ISBN: 9780871700193. Craig, B., and S. L. Pohlman. “Introduction.” Pohlman, S. L., ed. “General Corrosion.” Dexter, S. C., ed. “Localized Corrosion.” Steigerwald, R. “Metallurgically Influenced Corrosion.” Silverman, D. C., and R. B. Puyear. “Effects of Environmental Variables on Aqueous Corrosion.”
- Ma, B. “Fundamental Radiation Effects on Materials.” Chapter 4 in Nuclear Reactor Materials and Applications . New York, NY: Springer-Varlag, 1982. ISBN: 9780442225599.
- Kohyama, A., et al. “R&D of Advanced Material Systems for Reactor Core Component of Gas Cooled Fast Reactor.” Proceedings of ICAPP ‘05. Seoul: Korea, May 15-19, 2005. Paper 5282.
- The following sections in Korb, L. J., ed. Metals Handbook . 9th ed. Volume 13, Corrosion . Materials Park, OH: ASM International, 1987. ISBN: 9780871700193. Marek, M. I., et al. “Thermodynamics of Aqueous Corrosion.” Shoesmith, D. W. “Kinetics of Aqueous Corrosion.”
- Mizuno, Y., H. Ninokata, and D. J. Finnicum. “Risk-informed design of IRIS using a level-1 probabilistic risk assessment from its conceptual design phase.” Reliability Engineering and System Safety 87 (2005): 201-209.
- Carelli, M. D., B. Petrovic, and N. E. Todreas, et al. “The Design and Safety Features of the IRIS Reactor.” Nuclear Engineering & Design 230 (2004): 151-167.
- Carelli, M. D., and B. Petrovic. “A Flexible and Economic Small Reactor.” Nuclear Plant Journal (September-October 2006): 28-35.
- There is no required textbook for the course. Readings will be assigned from various regulatory, industry, and scientific sources.
Prerequisites & course information
Subject meets with 22.039 Prereq: 22.211 and 22.312 G (Fall) 3-2-7 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2006
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.