Nuclear power industry origins

Radioactivity in environmental waters can originate from both natural and artificial sources. The natural or background radioactivity usuaUy amounts to <100 mBq/L. The development of the nuclear power industry as weU as other industrial and medical uses of radioisotopes (qv) necessitates the deterrnination of gross alpha and beta activity of some water samples. These measurements are relatively inexpensive and are useful for screening samples. The gross alpha or beta activity of an acidified sample is deterrnined after an appropriate volume is evaporated to near dryness, transferred to a flat sample-mounting dish, and evaporated to dryness in an oven at 103—105°C. The amount of original sample taken depends on the amount of residue needed to provide measurable alpha or beta activity. 

I am a physicist who switched to nuclear engineering for my Ph D. My introduction to PSA was as an original participant in the Reactor Safety Study in 1972. Material for this book was first gathered in 1974 for a workshop on what to expect in WASH-1400 (the results of the Reactor Safety Study). Materials were gathered over the years for EPRI, Savannah River Laboratory, and other workshops. A culmination was in 1988 with "Probabilistic Risk Assessment in the Nuclear Power Industry" with Robert Hall as coauthor. This book updates these materials and adds material on PSA in the chemical process industry. I prepared the material for printing using a word processor... 

This technique is the longest established of all the human reliability quantification methods. It was developed by Dr. A. D. Swain in the late 1960s, originally in the context of military applications. It was subsequently developed further in the nuclear power industry. A comprehensive description of the method and the database used in its application, is contained in Swain and Guttmann (1983). Further developments are described in Swain (1987). The THERP approach is probably the most widely applied quantification technique. This is due to the fact that it provides its own database and uses methods such as event trees which are readily familiar to the engineering risk analyst. The most extensive application of THERP has been in nuclear power, but it has also been used in the military, chemical processing, transport, and other industries. 

SAIC provided much of the data used in this book from its proprietary files of previously analyzed and selected information. Since these data were primarily from the nuclear power industry, a literature search and industry survey described in Chapter 4 were conducted to locate other sources of data specific to the process equipment types in the CCPS Taxonomy. Candidate data resources identified through this effort were reviewed, and the appropriate ones were selected. Applicable failure rate data were extracted from them for the CCPS Generic Failure Rate Data Base. The resources that provided failure information are listed in Table 5.1 with data reference numbers used in the data tables to show where the data originated. 

ATOMS FOR PEACE" THE ORIGINS OF THE NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY... 

Fault trees originated in the aerospace industry and have been used extensively by the nuclear power industry to qualify and quantify the hazards and risks associated with nuclear power plants. This approach is becoming more popular in the chemical process industries, mostly as a result of the successful experiences demonstrated by the nuclear industry. 

FTA has a reputation for being time consuming and costiy and for requiring the services of highly specialized risk analysts. This reputation came about because most of the original FTA work was carried out in the aerospace and nuclear power industries. In both of these industries, the consequences of an accident are very severe so highly detailed analysis was required. This perception that FTA is extremely time consuming may be one reason that the technique has not been more widely adopted by the other... 

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries computer code CHAMPAGNE is a multi-phase, multi-component thermodynamics model originally created for the assessment of severe accidents in fast breeder nuclear power reactors. It was recently modified to also treat the formation and spreading of hydrogen gas clouds. CHAMPAGNE has been successfully applied both as a 2D and 3D version to the NASA LH2 spill tests from 1980 (Fig. 8-9) [30]. 

The idea of developing nuclear power based on fast reactors met with no success in the twentieth century. The industry, which started with thermal reactors of military origin in the 1950s, declined into stagnation, despite a steep rise in fossil fuel prices, as early as the 1970s in the USA and in the 1980s, after the Chernobyl accident, in Russia and Europe. 

System safety as a formal discipline was originally developed and promulgated by the military-industrial complex to prevent mishaps that were costing lives, resources, and equipment loss. As the effectiveness of the discipline was observed by other industries, it was adopted and applied to these industries and technology fields, such as commercial aircraft, nuclear power, chemical... 

The feedback of operating data or experience is an inherent and important aspect of NRC activities and involves all NRC organizational elements at one time or another. The principal NRC organizations involved are the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) and the Office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data (AEOD). AEOD was established several months after the TMI-2 accident to identify and feedback significant safety lessons of operational experience to the NRC, its licensees, the nuclear industry as a whole, and the public. Table 2.2-5 lists some of the NRC-originated documents that are used to disseminate relevant nuclear power plant experience. Of particular interest to licensees are Bulletins, Information Notices, and NRR Generic Letters. 

Industry The industry from which the data originated, such as chemical process, power, nuclear, and offshore oil. 

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