Annual report 1984

Nuclear power technology, isotope technology and basic research in physics comprises the nuclear activities of Institute for Energy Technology (IFE). In 1984 the Institute entered into an agreement with the present foreign signatories (comprising more than 40 organisations from 10 participating countries) for the continuation of the OECD Halden Project for the three year period from 1985 to 1987. IFE's share of the total budget is appr. 25%. The project's fuel investigations have in 1984 particularly emphasised the characterisation of long term effects with regard to efficiency and operational safety, and the determination of reliability and durability in the case of accident with the loss of cooling water. During 1984 the new experimental reactor control room of the Halden Project was put in operation. The screen based control room, connected to a detailed simulator of a PWR, is intended for experiments in the field of man-machine communication, information presentation, testing of specific systems and training of operators. A testing of alarm systems carried out during 1984 shows that the filtering of alarms is an effective means to ensure that the operator concentrates on the most relevant information during disruptions in the plant operations, and that the use of mimic diagrams facilitates the indentification of alarm situations. Apart from isotope production, the efforts of the isotope laboratories have been concentrated on the development of two completely new radiopharmaceuticals, with the aid of which a blood sample can be marked with a radioactive tracer for the location of abcesses, states of inflammation or blood clots. Research in basic physics has mainly been based on the use of neutron irradiations from the JEEP II reactor for the investigation of the structure and dynamics of solid state materials.