Nuclear Reactors As Art

Hemos recommends the coverage over at Wired of a project to digitize nuclear reactor art. "Not all nuclear reactors are built alike. Power plant designs can vary in their fuels, coolants, and configurations, a fact beautifully illustrated by a series of reactor wall charts originally published in issues of Nuclear Engineering International during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, the charts have been lovingly collected by Ronald Knief, a nuclear engineer at Sandia National Laboratory. Recently, he completed his collection... and began to digitize the drawings. The first eight out of more than 100 have now been permanently archived online... 'This is not a CAD/CAM-type thing,' Knief said. 'This really is art.'"

Comments

The variability is bad

[plopez]

Starglider29a asked why they is a lack of uniformity. In the US at least there was no standard design. Each was basically as "one off" because the company that won the contract changed from reactor to reactor. A low bid contract method. This meant each reactor was a "one off".

My understanding is that in France the government commissioned a standard design which it then licensed out. This had some benefits:
1) The design allowed better project management. Everyone knew what needed to be done. This made estimation of effort easier.

2) Due to point #1, each company had a better idea of it took to build a reactor and bid accordingly.
This also helped the costs to be budgeted.

3) Lessons learned from one reactor can be incorporated into the newer, yet to be built, reactors. It is also easier to retrofit older reactors with lessons learned. In short, incremental improvement.

4) Related to pint 3, it is easier to QA a standard design. You know what to expect and if the expectations are not met something is wrong.

Making every reactor a "one off" is crazy. I googled +ISO +"nuclear reactor design" and came up without a comprehensive spec. Having a standard might be a good idea.