PREDICTING EVAPORATION RATES FROM SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL STORAGE POOLS

Accurate prediction of evaporative losses from spent nuclear storage pools (SFPs) is important for activities ranging from sizing of water makeup sys-tems during plant design to predicting the time available to supply emergency makeup water fol-lowing severe accidents. Existing correlations for predicting evaporation from water surfaces are only optimized for conditions typical of swimming pools. This new approach that treats evaporation as a dif-fusion process has yielded an evaporation rate mod-el that provided a better fit of published data and measurements from two SFPs. Insights from treat-ing evaporation as a diffusion process include cor-recting for the effects of air flow and solutes on evaporation rate