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Europe's nuclear power experiment; history of the OECD Dragon project
Ann. nucl. Energy, Vol. 10, No. 8, pp. 445~446, 1983 Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain
BOOK REVIEWS Europe's Nuclear Power Experiment; History of the OECD Dragon Project, by E. N. SHAW. Pergamon Press, Oxford (1983). 338 pages. £12.50. The Dragon project lasted 17 years from 1959 to 1976, encompassing both the European interest in high temperature reactors as such and in particular the Winfrith High Temperature Reactor itself. It was one of the first European technical projects, started under the auspices of the OEEC's European Nuclear Energy Agency and suffering perhaps from all the ills that such a 'first born' inherits, including the subsequent birth-pangs of the European Economic Community. In this detailed but non-technical history, Shaw follows in detail the twists and turns of the project,judiciously analysing the lessons that should be learnt from its difficulties. The account is more than a sequential history since it continues with an appreciation of the interaction of the project with the individual nations and groupings who collaborated in funding and staffing Dragon, thirteen nations in all. Was Dragon successful? The author shows that this is too naive a question that cannot be answered shortly. That Dragon has closed without seeing the commercialization of the high temperature reactor is evident. But the ostensible aims of the Dragon project did not charge the organization with that function, only perhaps the preparation of the essential technical knowledge from which a commercial system could grow. Indeed Shaw shows clearly that the limited periods of certain funding, the battles to continue the project and the changing circumstances and perceived needs while undoubtedly promoting flexibility, hampered the steady progress of the project. For example, the final form of the reactor at Winfrith bore little relation to the thorium uranium, continuous fission-product bleeding design of the mid-fifties. Yet if Dragon suffered, it was not directly by being designed and run by committee, like the proverbial giraffe. Perhaps this was because of the outstanding qualities of its two Chief Executives, C o m p t o n Rennie and Leslie Shepherd. Rather, like the blind men feeling the elephant, the thirteen nations largely got what they individually wanted out of the project (and, to the credit again of the executives, very largely in proportion to what they put in). This history will be fascinating to the 250 or so engineers and scientists from Europe who helped fashion it but has m a n y interesting lessons for us all in the m a n a g e m e n t of multi-national projects, JET and perhaps the Next European Torus included.
Engineering Department Cambridge University England
Dr J. D. LEWlNS
Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Nuclear Systems, edited by H. FENECH. Pergamon Press, New York (1981). 582 pages. $55.00. This book appears to occupy a unique place a m o n g nuclear engineering texts. There are the books on individual reactor types produced by the American Nuclear Society; there is 445
Elements of Nuclear React or Design edited by Weisman, only a third of which is devoted to heat transfer and fluid flow ; and this reviewer's introductory Thermal Design of Nuclear Reactors. Since Fenech's book covers nearly all the main reactor types, and assumes that readers already have a knowledge of heat transfer and fluid flow equivalent to a oneyear university graduate course, then clearly it can be expected to go beyond the information available in other textbooks. For this reason alone one would expect it to find a definite, if somewhat specialized, market. After an introductory chapter that deals in a general way with safety and licensing, and with fuel-rod design, come four chapters dealing in turn with PWR, BWR, liquid metal cooled systems and helium cooled systems. Finally, and a refreshing change this makes, the steam generators are described in the sort of detail usually reserved for the core. In one sense one could almost describe the four chapters on the different reactor types as separate books. Each starts afresh with its own numbering of figures and equations, and each has its own preferences as to units. Also there is a small a m o u n t of duplication. In another sense though the chapters do belong together because a reasonably uniform style and level of presentation has been achieved, quite an accomplishment in view of the fifteen contributors credited at the beginning. In the Preface it is stated that the "publication is an attempt, ambitious as it may be, to provide a bridge between fundamental principles and current design practice". On reading through the book I discovered that this did not mean what I had half hoped it might. If you want to know why a particular reactor system operates at given temperatures and pressures with a particular size of fuel rods, type of steam cycle etc., what optimizations were performed to arrive at these values, then you will look in vain in this book. Instead the aim is both more limited and much more realistic. The different reactor systems exist, in most cases with considerable operating experience. There is little scope for radical changes in design, so it is more realistic to describe the system as it exists, explain the constraints on the design in the form of licensing regulations etc. and then detail the methods and equations used in the heat-transfer and fluid-flow analysis. This is exactly the format used in most of the chapters, and works quite well. One important problem in constructing this bridge between fundamental principles and current design practice is recognized by Todreas in the P W R chapter. The complex computer codes used for subchannel analysis to some extent must be taken as packages. They have been tested against and fitted to key experimental results, and have been shown to do the job of correctly predicting the limiting parameters of the design. So although more recent work may show that a correlation used in some small part of the program can definitely be improved upon, it will not necessarily be altered, since this would require revalidation of the main program. The t o p i c of subchannel analysis inevitably appears in several parts of the book. It might have been better to give it a separate chapter, starting with a simple, single fluid, derivation, relegating some of the complexities to appendices, and going on to discuss turbulent mixing models and modifications required for individual systems. At the moment
BOOK REVIEWS Europe's Nuclear Power Experiment; History of the OECD Dragon Project, by E. N. SHAW. Pergamon Press, Oxford (1983). 338 pages. £12.50. The Dragon project lasted 17 years from 1959 to 1976, encompassing both the European interest in high temperature reactors as such and in particular the Winfrith High Temperature Reactor itself. It was one of the first European technical projects, started under the auspices of the OEEC's European Nuclear Energy Agency and suffering perhaps from all the ills that such a 'first born' inherits, including the subsequent birth-pangs of the European Economic Community. In this detailed but non-technical history, Shaw follows in detail the twists and turns of the project,judiciously analysing the lessons that should be learnt from its difficulties. The account is more than a sequential history since it continues with an appreciation of the interaction of the project with the individual nations and groupings who collaborated in funding and staffing Dragon, thirteen nations in all. Was Dragon successful? The author shows that this is too naive a question that cannot be answered shortly. That Dragon has closed without seeing the commercialization of the high temperature reactor is evident. But the ostensible aims of the Dragon project did not charge the organization with that function, only perhaps the preparation of the essential technical knowledge from which a commercial system could grow. Indeed Shaw shows clearly that the limited periods of certain funding, the battles to continue the project and the changing circumstances and perceived needs while undoubtedly promoting flexibility, hampered the steady progress of the project. For example, the final form of the reactor at Winfrith bore little relation to the thorium uranium, continuous fission-product bleeding design of the mid-fifties. Yet if Dragon suffered, it was not directly by being designed and run by committee, like the proverbial giraffe. Perhaps this was because of the outstanding qualities of its two Chief Executives, C o m p t o n Rennie and Leslie Shepherd. Rather, like the blind men feeling the elephant, the thirteen nations largely got what they individually wanted out of the project (and, to the credit again of the executives, very largely in proportion to what they put in). This history will be fascinating to the 250 or so engineers and scientists from Europe who helped fashion it but has m a n y interesting lessons for us all in the m a n a g e m e n t of multi-national projects, JET and perhaps the Next European Torus included.
Engineering Department Cambridge University England
Dr J. D. LEWlNS
Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Nuclear Systems, edited by H. FENECH. Pergamon Press, New York (1981). 582 pages. $55.00. This book appears to occupy a unique place a m o n g nuclear engineering texts. There are the books on individual reactor types produced by the American Nuclear Society; there is 445
Elements of Nuclear React or Design edited by Weisman, only a third of which is devoted to heat transfer and fluid flow ; and this reviewer's introductory Thermal Design of Nuclear Reactors. Since Fenech's book covers nearly all the main reactor types, and assumes that readers already have a knowledge of heat transfer and fluid flow equivalent to a oneyear university graduate course, then clearly it can be expected to go beyond the information available in other textbooks. For this reason alone one would expect it to find a definite, if somewhat specialized, market. After an introductory chapter that deals in a general way with safety and licensing, and with fuel-rod design, come four chapters dealing in turn with PWR, BWR, liquid metal cooled systems and helium cooled systems. Finally, and a refreshing change this makes, the steam generators are described in the sort of detail usually reserved for the core. In one sense one could almost describe the four chapters on the different reactor types as separate books. Each starts afresh with its own numbering of figures and equations, and each has its own preferences as to units. Also there is a small a m o u n t of duplication. In another sense though the chapters do belong together because a reasonably uniform style and level of presentation has been achieved, quite an accomplishment in view of the fifteen contributors credited at the beginning. In the Preface it is stated that the "publication is an attempt, ambitious as it may be, to provide a bridge between fundamental principles and current design practice". On reading through the book I discovered that this did not mean what I had half hoped it might. If you want to know why a particular reactor system operates at given temperatures and pressures with a particular size of fuel rods, type of steam cycle etc., what optimizations were performed to arrive at these values, then you will look in vain in this book. Instead the aim is both more limited and much more realistic. The different reactor systems exist, in most cases with considerable operating experience. There is little scope for radical changes in design, so it is more realistic to describe the system as it exists, explain the constraints on the design in the form of licensing regulations etc. and then detail the methods and equations used in the heat-transfer and fluid-flow analysis. This is exactly the format used in most of the chapters, and works quite well. One important problem in constructing this bridge between fundamental principles and current design practice is recognized by Todreas in the P W R chapter. The complex computer codes used for subchannel analysis to some extent must be taken as packages. They have been tested against and fitted to key experimental results, and have been shown to do the job of correctly predicting the limiting parameters of the design. So although more recent work may show that a correlation used in some small part of the program can definitely be improved upon, it will not necessarily be altered, since this would require revalidation of the main program. The t o p i c of subchannel analysis inevitably appears in several parts of the book. It might have been better to give it a separate chapter, starting with a simple, single fluid, derivation, relegating some of the complexities to appendices, and going on to discuss turbulent mixing models and modifications required for individual systems. At the moment