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ENHANCING NUCLEAR ENERGY SUSTAINABILITY USING ADVANCED NUCLEAR REACTORS

Elshahat, Ayah Elsayed

[Thesis]. Manchester, UK: The University of Manchester; 2015.

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Abstract

The safety performance of nuclear power reactors is a very important factor in evaluating nuclear energy sustainability. Improving the safety performance of nuclear reactors can enhance nuclear energy sustainability as it will improve the environmental indicator used to evaluate the overall sustainability of nuclear energy.Great interest is given now to advanced nuclear reactors especially those using passive safety components. Investigation of the improvement in nuclear safety using advanced reactors was done by comparing the safety performance of a conventional reactor which uses active safety systems, such as Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), with an advanced reactor which uses passive safety systems, such as AP1000, during a design basis accident, such as Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA), using the PCTran as a simulation code. To assess the safety performance of PWR and AP1000, the “Global Safety Index” GSI model was developed by introducing three indicators: probability of accident occurrence, performance of safety system in case of an accident occurrence, and the consequences of the accident. Only the second indicator was considered in this work.A more detailed model for studying the performance of passive safety systems in AP1000 was developed. That was done using SCDAPSIM/RELAP5 code as it is capable of modelling design basis accidents (DBAs) in advanced nuclear reactors

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I used PCTran in comparing between conventional PWR and Advanced PWR (Westinghouse AP1000).Fuzzy Logic Toolbox in Matlab was used in assessing nuclear energy sustainability index and Global Safety index (GSI).RELAP/SCDAPSIM was used in modelling the AP1000 and its passive safety systems.