• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.1540-1555
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• 2021

The plate-type fuel assembly adopted in nuclear research reactor suffers from complicated effect induced by non-uniform irradiation, which might affect its stress conditions, mechanical behavior and thermal-hydraulic performance. A reliable numerical method is of great importance to reveal the complex evolution of mechanical deformation, flow redistribution and temperature field for the plate-type fuel assembly under non-uniform irradiation. This paper is the first part of a two-part study developing the numerical methodology for the thermal-fluid-structure coupling behaviors of plate-type fuel assembly under irradiation. In this paper, the thermal-fluid-structure coupling methodology has been developed for plate-type fuel assembly under non-uniform irradiation condition by exchanging thermal-hydraulic and mechanical deformation parameters between Finite Element Model (FEM) software and Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) software with Mesh-based parallel Code Coupling Interface (MpCCI), which has been validated with experimental results. Based on the established methodology, the effects of non-uniform irradiation and fluid were discussed, which demonstrated that the maximum mechanical deformation with irradiation was dozens of times larger than that without irradiation and the hydraulic load on fuel plates due to differential pressure played a dominant role in the mechanical deformation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.1604-1615
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• 2023

In an open-pool type research reactor with a downward forced flow in the core, pipes can be under sub-atmospheric pressure because of the large pressure drop at the reactor core in the atmospheric pool. Sub-atmospheric pressure can result in air inflow into the pipe from the pressure difference between the atmosphere and the inside of the pipe, which in a postulated pipe break scenario can lead to the breakdown of the cooling pump. In this study, a plant-scale experiment was conducted to study air inflow in large piping systems by considering the actual operational conditions of an advanced research reactor. The air inflow rate was measured, and the entrained air was visualized to investigate the behavior of air inflow and flow regime depending on the pipe break size. In addition, the developed drift-flux model for a large vertical pipe with a diameter of 600 mm was compared with other correlations. The flow regime transition in a large vertical pipe under downward flow was also studied using the newly developed drift-flux model. Consequently, the characteristics of two-phase flow in a large vertical pipe were found to differ from those in small vertical pipes where liquid recirculation was not dominant.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1417-1428
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• 2020

The design of a nuclear reactor core requires basic thermal-hydraulic information concerning the heat transfer regime at which onset of nucleate boiling (ONB) will occur, the pressure drop and flow rate through the reactor core, the temperature and power distributions in the reactor core, the departure from nucleate boiling (DNB), the condition for onset of flow instability (OFI), in addition to, the critical velocity beyond which the fuel elements will collapse. These values depend on coolant velocity, fuel element geometry, inlet temperature, flow direction and water column above the top of the reactor core. Enough safety margins to ONB, DNB and OFI must-emphasized. A heat transfer package is used for calculating convection heat transfer coefficient in single phase turbulent, transition and laminar regimes. The main objective of this paper is to study the possibility of power upgrading of WWR-S research reactor from 2 to 10 MW_th. This study presents a one-dimensional mathematical model (axial direction) for steady-state thermal-hydraulic design and analysis of the upgraded WWR-S reactor in which two types of plate fuel elements are employed. FOR-CONV computer program is developed for the needs of the power upgrading of WWR-S reactor up to 10 MW_th.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2005

The HANARO, a multi-purpose research reactor of 30 MWth, open-tank-in-pool type, has been under normal operation since its initial criticality in February, 1995. The HANARO is composed af inlet plenum, grid plate, core channel with flow tubes and chimney. The reactor core channel is located at about twelve meters (12 m) depth of the reactor pool and cooled by the upward flow that the coolant enters the lower inlet of the plenum, rises up through the grid plate and the core channel and comes out from the outlet of chimney. A fission moly guide tube is extended from the reactor core to the top of the reactor chimney for easily loading a fission moly target under the reactor normal operation. But active coolant through the core can be quickly raised up to the top of the chimney through the guide tube by jet flow. This paper describes an analytical analysis that is the study of the flow behavior through the guide tube under reactor normal operation and unloading the target. As results, it was conformed through the analysis results that the flow rate, reduced to about fourteen kilogram per second (14 kg/s) from the original flow rate of sixteen point three kilogram per second (16.3 kg/s) did not show the guide tube jet.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.54-62
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• 2011

KAERI has developed a KALIMER-600 which is a pool-type sodium-cooled fast reactor with a 600MWe electric generation capacity. For a SFR development, one of the main topics is an enhancement of the reactor system safety. Therefore, we have a long-term plan to design the large sodium experimental facility to evaluate the reactor safety and component performance. In order to extrapolate a thermal hydraulic phenomena in a large sodium reactor, the thermal hydraulics phenomena is under investigation in a 1/$10^{th}$ water-simulant facility for the KALIMER-600. In this paper, we shortly described the experimental facility setup and the measurement of the isothermal global flow behavior. For the flow field measurement, the PIV method was used in a transparent Plexiglas reactor vessel model at around $20^{\circ}C$ water condition.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.93-102
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• 2021

The analysis of the fluid flow characteristics in reactor pressure vessel is an important part of the hydraulic design of nuclear power plant, which is related to the structure design of reactor internals, the flow distribution at core inlet and the safety of nuclear power plant. The flow distribution and mixing characteristics in the pressurized reactor vessel for the 1000MWe advanced pressurized water reactor is analyzed by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method in this study. The geometry model of the full-scaled reactor vessel is built, which includes the cold and hot legs, downcomer, lower plenum, core, upper plenum, top plenum, and is verified with some parameters in DCD. Under normal condition, it is found that the flow skirt, core plate holes and outlet pipe cause pressure loss. The maximum and minimum flow coefficient is 1.028 and 0.961 respectively, and the standard deviation is 0.019. Compared with other reactor type, it shows relatively uniform of the flow distribution at the core inlet. The coolant mixing coefficient is investigated with adding additional variables, showing that mass transfer of coolant occurs near the interface. The coolant mainly distributes in the 90° area of the corresponding core inlet, and mixes at the interface with the coolant from the adjacent cold leg. 0.1% of corresponding coolant is still distributed at the inlet of the outer-ring components, indicating wide range of mixing coefficient distribution.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.1835-1840
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• 2004

The HANARO, a multi-purpose research reactor of 30 MWth, open-tank-in-pool type, has been under normal operation since its initial criticality in February, 1995. The HANARO is composed of inlet plenum, grid plate, core channel with flow tubes and chimney. The reactor core channel is located at about twelve meters (12 m) depth of the reactor pool and cooled by the upward flow that the coolant enters the lower inlet of the plenum,. rises up through the grid plate and the core channel and comes out from the outlet of chimney. A guide tube is extended from the reactor core to the top of the reactor chimney for easily un/loading a target under the reactor normal operation. But active coolant through the core can be quickly raised up to the top of the chimney through the guide tube by a jet flow. This paper describes an analytical analysis that is the study of the flow behavior through the guide tube under reactor normal operation and unloading the target. As results, it was conformed through the analysis results that the guide jet is suppressed under the top of the chimney after modifying the orifice diameter of 37.5 mm to 31 mm.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.07c
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• pp.1777-1779
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• 2001

In this experiment, an attempt to use the sludge pellets as catalyst for NO removal from simulated gas is experimentally investigated by using cylinder type reactor. An experimental investigation has been conducted for NO concentration of 50[ppm], 100[ppm], 200[ppm] balanced with air. a gas flow rate of 5[1/min]. Cylinder type reactor is at upstream of system for corona discharge and packed bed type reactor filled with sludge pellets ate put at downstream of Cylinder type reactor for catalystic effect. And AC voltage to discharge the gases was supplied. In the result, NO removal with magnetic field is higher than that without magnetic field, when packed-bed reactor with sludge pellet is installed at downstream of cylinder reactor NO, $NO_2$ removal rate increased and $O_3$ is not generated.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.40-49
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• 2021

This paper explains the development process of methane decomposition to hydrogen and carbon black using solar thermal energy. It also demonstrates the advantages and disadvantages of five different reactors for each development stage, including the reactor's experimental results. Starting with the initial direct heating type reactor, the indirect heating type reactor was developed through five modifications. The 40-kWth solar furnace installed at the Korea Institute of Energy Research was used for the experiment. In the experiment using the developed indirect heating reactor, an 89.0% methane to hydrogen conversion rate was achieved at a methane flow rate of 40 L/min, obtained at about twice the flow rate compared to previous advanced studies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2001.07a
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• pp.499-502
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• 2001

In this experiment, an attempt to use the sludge pellets as catalyst for NO removal from simulated gas is experimentally investigated by using cylinder type reactor and packed-bed reactor. An experimental investigation has been conducted for NO concentration of 50[ppm], 100[ppm], 200[ppm] balanced with air, a gas flow rate of 5[1/min]. Ac voltage to discharge the gases was supplied. In the result, NOx removal rate in packed bed reactor is higher than that in cylinder type reactor. it is thought that plasma density in contact point of BaTiO$_3$ is significantly higher than that in cylinder reactor.