Resumen
Accurate prediction of evaporative losses from spent nuclear storage pools (SFPs) is important for activities ranging from sizing of water makeup systems during plant design to predicting the time available to supply emergency makeup water following 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 diffusion process has yielded an evaporation rate model that provided a better fit of published data and measurements from two SFPs. Insights from treating evaporation as a diffusion process include correcting for the effects of air flow and solutes on evaporation rate.