Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Thermal-hydraulic behavior simulations of the reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS) experimental facility using Flownex

  • Marcos S. Sena (Nuclear Engineering Department, Texas A&M University) ;
  • Yassin A. Hassan (Nuclear Engineering Department, Texas A&M University)
  • Received : 2023.02.27
  • Accepted : 2023.05.19
  • Published : 2023.09.25
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Abstract

The scaled water-cooled Reactor Cavity Cooling System (RCCS) experimental facility reproduces a passive safety feature to be implemented in Generation IV nuclear reactors. It keeps the reactor cavity and other internal structures in operational conditions by removing heat leakage from the reactor pressure vessel. The present work uses Flownex one-dimensional thermal-fluid code to model the facility and predict the experimental thermal-hydraulic behavior. Two representative steady-state cases defined by the bulk volumetric flow rate are simulated (Re = 2,409 and Re = 11,524). Results of the cavity outlet temperature, risers' temperature profile, and volumetric flow split in the cooling panel are also compared with the experimental data and RELAP system code simulations. The comparisons are in reasonable agreement with the previous studies, demonstrating the ability of Flownex to simulate the RCCS behavior. It is found that the low Re case of 2,409, temperature and flow split are evenly distributed across the risers. On the contrary, there's an asymmetry trend in both temperature and flow split distributions for the high Re case of 11,524.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This study was completed by a researcher supported by the Brazilian Navy. The authors thank Brent Hollrah and Michael Gorman for their contributions to this work. The authors are grateful to the Flownex team for their support and for providing the code software.

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