Occupational Radiation Exposure, must be kept As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA). Operational, economic and social factors need to be taken into account. &nbsp;Fast Purging of a Hydrogen Cooled generator, can be achieved&nbsp;through the means of a portable system that increases the rate of carbon dioxide vaporization. This system has been successfully utilized at two nuclear plants in the USA: Vogtle Electric Generating Plant and Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Generating Plant. This increased flow of carbon dioxide along with additional gas monitoring enabled the plant to purge the hydrogen from the generator with carbon dioxide in 1 hour and 9 minutes. As a result, the time in the exposure area of operators related to this procedure was reduced by approximately 11 hours from the typical purging time.&nbsp;The generator was also able to be brought back online more rapidly when the air was replaced with carbon dioxide in 1 hour and 6 minutes again, contributing to the exposure reduction. This technology clearly demonstrates that exposure meeting the requirements of ALARA can be achieved. From both types of nuclear reactors, the most significant benefit is achieved on Boiling Water Nuclear Reactors.&nbsp;Fast Purging operations are described and test runs are presented and additional benefits of the purging are &nbsp;discussed. These include outage time reduction and risk mitigation.

Occupational Radiation Exposures Alara Reduction Through Fast Purging of Hydrogen Cooled Generators for Boiling Water Nuclear Reactors

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ICONE/ICONE28/volume/85246

2021 28th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE28)

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