Astronuc,
It's not a reactivity issue, it's a health physics issue. The question is if I drop a blade and it somehow lands on the reactor vessel flange, what would be the dose rates in the upper elevations of the drywell.
Thanks for the help,
JTG
I work in a BWR-5 plant and this outage we will be swapping 36 control rod blades. We currently restrict access to the upper elevations of the drywell during irradiated hardware and fuel moves because of the potential dose rates if we were to drop something. This has a significant schedule...