Cracks found at reactor at Hunterston B nuclear power station

Perhaps some of those on this site have seen the news article on the BBC website yesterday about cracks appearing in the reactor at the Hunterston B nuclear power station. As the article states, cracking in the graphite bricks is predicted and the regulators are happy that the reactor is safe to operate.

We've been doing some research at Manchester looking into whether tiny spatial variations in material properties need to be taken into account when carrying out predictive computer modelling of nuclear graphite reactor bricks.

Two preliminary conference papers can be downloaded at the links below. A more comprehensive journal paper is under review and I'll keep you posted as to whether that is accepted for publication.

Arregui et al. "Stochastic thermomechanical analysis of nuclear graphite using ParaFEM"

Arregui et al. "Studies of the material of nuclear graphite with a random finite element approach"