Nuclear Engineering Commons^™

Dismal Science Meets Dismal Subject: The (Mal)Practice Of Nuclear Power Economics, Charles Komanoff

New England Journal of Public Policy

Electric utilities, reactor designers and builders, and the federal government have badly underestimated the costs of new nuclear power plants over the past fifteen years. Although not all of the increases were readily predictable, particularly those caused by rapid general inflation, nuclear advocates failed to foresee most of the sixfold growth in real costs resulting from new reactors' greater complexity, scope, and regulatory surveillance.

This review recounts the methods used by nuclear power proponents to convince policymakers, the public, and themselves that new nuclear plants would be competitive with other energy sources, long after conclusive contrary evidence was available. It …

Coupled Radiation Transport / Thermal Analysis Of The Radiation Shield For A Space Nuclear Retractor, William John Barattino

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

The renewed interest of conducting operations in space has given rise to re-establishment of space reactor systems development. The current SP-100 program is focussing on design of a 100 kW nuclear e reactor for space application. This research project investigated the coupling between radiation transport, energy deposition, and temperature distribution for a variety of space reactor shield configurations. The basic shield design consisted of tungsten [W], and natural lithium hydride either cast or pressed into a stainless steel matrix [LiH(Nat)].

For a nuclear reactor operating at a power level of 1.66 MW_th, temperature feedback effects on energy deposition …

Seabrook: A Case Study In Mismanagement, Irvin C. Bupp

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Seabrook nuclear power plant construction project is an unqualified financial disaster. It simultaneously threatens its chief owner, the Public Service Co. of New Hampshire (PSNH) with bankruptcy and the company's electricity customers with huge rate increases. The fifteen-year history of the project is reviewed to identify "what went wrong?"

The review suggests that the basic problem has been mismanagement by both PSNH and by government regulators. A three-year regulatory imbroglio over the environmental effects of the plant's cooling system was extremely costly in the mid-1970s.

By the time this problem was belatedly resolved, the project had begun to outstrip …

Numerical Simulation Of Mixing Processes In Two-Dimensional Channel Flows, Milan Karel Straka

Doctoral Dissertations

"Recently, considerable interest has arisen in the numerical simulation of laminar and turbulent transport phenomena. More knowledge in this field is needed to improve predictions of heat and mass transfer processes in a variety of technical fields.

In this work a new computationally efficient transport model is developed. It consists of partially parabolized time-dependent equations of motion, continuity, and concentration of nonconservative species. Pertinent equations are solved numerically for both laminar and turbulent flow.

Results of calculations of laminar flow in the entry region of a parallel-plate channel agree well with the work of other authors. For turbulent flows, the …