Friday, January 15, 2010

NO GROWTH

Click on the above to enlarge. Use your back arrow to get back here.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Baker-Just is alive, San Onofre to run pilot M-5 bundles.

San Onofre Units 2 and 3 will run some pilot M-5 bundles. They cite data reported by Framatome Cogema Fuels (FCF) to establish that M-5 metal-water reaction characteristics are bounded by Baker-Just. Click on the slide below to enlarge and then use your return arrow to get back here.

The details of the FCF tests are proprietary, however, the NRC's description includes induction heating of M-5 as well as zircaloy specimens in super heated steam. It is likely that the apparatus is similar to the following setup that your blogger deployed during the 1960s in undocumented exploratory work.

This setup leads to nonconservative findings for zircaloy (or M-5) metal-water reaction characteristics in bundled fuel rods under LOCA conditions. In the above setup, the induction heated specimen is surrounded by the water cooled induction coil. In contrast, in a fuel bundle, the M-5 cladding is surrounded by other high temperature fuel rods. See PRM-50-93, ADAMS ML093290250 for performance of zircaloy clad bundled fuel under LOCA conditions in several experiments including LOFT FP-2.





Why does the NRC have Commissioners?

I've been posting stuff regarding my attempts to get ECCS documents produced by Penn State since 1998. My Congressman was also stiff-armed by NRC. They sent him a copy of their earlier rejection of my request. As you may read in the last sentence, NRC tells me to go to federal court. Why do we have Commissioners if they will not act on my request?

I'll get back to my Congressman and tell him to get those reports and advise him that there should be no need for a request via FOIA.

I want those Penn State Reports

Here is another shot at getting the NRC to release those reports. I submitted the following comment to NRC. I could have been a bit more formal, but this is legal and it was a lot easier to produce by copying and pasting from the Federal Register of August 10, 2009, page 40006.