• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.56 no.4
• /
• pp.1310-1319
• /
• 2024

The reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS) is a passive reactor safety system commonly present in the designs of High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGR) that removes heat from the reactor pressure vessel by means of natural convection and radiation. It is one of the factors responsible for ensuring that the reactor does not melt down under any plausible accident scenario. For the simulation of accident scenarios, which are transient phenomena unfolding over a span of up to several days, intermediate fidelity methods and system codes must be employed to limit the models' execution time. These models can quantify radiation heat transfer well, but heat transfer caused by natural convection must be quantified with the use of correlations for the heat transfer coefficient. It is difficult to obtain reliable correlations for HTGR RCCS heat transfer coefficients experimentally due to such a system's size. They could, however, be obtained from high-fidelity steady-state simulations of RCCSs. The Rayleigh number in RCCSs is too high for using a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) technique; thus, a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach must be employed. There are many RANS models, each performing best under different geometry and fluid flow conditions. To find the most suitable one for simulating an RCCS, the RANS models need to be validated. This work benchmarks various RANS models against three experiments performed on the HTTR RCCS Mockup by the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in 1993. This facility is a 1/6 scale model of a vessel cooling system (VCS) for the High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR), which is operated by JAEA. Multiple RANS models were evaluated on a simplified 2d-axisymmetric geometry. They were found to reproduce the experimental temperature profiles with errors of up to 22% for the lowest temperature benchmark and 15% for the higher temperature benchmarks. The results highlight that the pragmatic turbulence models need to be validated for high Rayleigh natural convection-driven flows and improved accordingly, more publicly available experimental data of RCCS resembling experiments is needed and indicate that a 2d-axisymmetric geometry approximation is likely insufficient to capture all the relevant phenomena in RCCS simulations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 1997.05a
• /
• pp.473-478
• /
• 1997

A severe accident management strategy, in-vessel retention corium through external reactor vessel cooling(ERVC) is being studied worldwide as a means to prevent reactor vessel failure following a core melt accident. An evaluation of feasibility of this ERVC for a large Advanced Light Water Reactor (ALWR) is presented. To account for the coolability of corium and metal in the reactor vessel, a thermal analysis is performed using an existing method. Results show that the peak heat flux along the inner surface of the reactor vessel lower head has a relatively smaller margin than a small capacity reactor such as AP600 in regards with the critical heat flux attainable at the outer surface of the reactor vessel lower head.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.112-118
• /
• 2005

Study was focused on the effect of the cooling rate on the embrittlement behavior of Zircaloy-4 cladding simulated Loss Of Coolant Accident (LOCA) environment. Claddings were oxidized at given temperature and given time followed by various water quenching in the range of $0.6^{\circ}C$ and $100^{\circ}C$ per second. Cladding failed after water quenching above the threshold oxidation. Threshold oxidation was decreased as the cooling rate increased, which is due to the matensite structure formed during fast cooling rate.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.342-348
• /
• 2001

A new design concept for a decay heat removal system in a liquid metal reactor is proposed. The new design utilizes a thermosyphon to enhance the heat removal capacity and its heat transfer characteristics are analyzed against the current PSDRS (Passive Safety Decay heat Removal System) in the KAL IMER (Korea Advanced LIquid MEtal Reactor) design. The preliminary analysis results show that the new design with a thermosyphon yields substantial increase of 20∼40% in the decay heat removal capacity compared to the current design that do not have the thermosyphon. The new design reduces the temperature rise in the cooling air of the system and helps the surrounding structure in maintaining its mechanical integrity for long term operation at an accident. Also the analysis revealed the characteristics of the interactions among various heat transfer modes in the new design.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.48 no.4
• /
• pp.906-914
• /
• 2016

We investigated the heat load imposed on the lower head of a reactor vessel by the natural convection of the oxide pool in a severe accident. Mass transfer experiments using a $CuSO_4-H_2SO_4$ electroplating system were performed based on the analogy between heat and mass transfer. The $Ra^{\prime}_H$ of $10^{14}$ order was achieved with a facility height of only 0.1 m. Three different volumetric heat sources were compared; two had identical configurations to those previously reported, and the other was designed by the authors. The measured Nu's of the lower head were about 30% lower than those previously reported. The measured angular heat flux ratios were similar to those reported in existing studies except for the peaks appearing near the top. The volumetric heat sources did not affect the Nu of the lower head but affected the Nu of the top plate by obstructing the rising flow from the bottom.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 2004.10a
• /
• pp.161-162
• /
• 2004

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.48 no.4
• /
• pp.932-940
• /
• 2016

Pool boiling heat transfer of water saturated at atmospheric pressure was investigated experimentally on Cu surfaces with high-temperature, thermally-conductive, microporous coatings (HTCMC). The coatings were created by sintering Cu powders on Cu surfaces in a nitrogen gas environment. A parametric study of the effects of particle size and coating thickness was conducted using three average particle sizes (APSs) of $10{\mu}m$, $25{\mu}m$, and $67{\mu}m$ and various coating thicknesses. It was found that nucleate boiling heat transfer (NBHT) and critical heat flux (CHF) were enhanced significantly for sintered microporous coatings. This is believed to have resulted from the random porous structures that appear to include reentrant type cavities. The maximum NBHT coefficient was measured to be approximately $400kW/m^2k$ with APS $67{\mu}m$ and $296{\mu}m$ coating thicknesses. This value is approximately eight times higher than that of a plain Cu surface. The maximum CHF observed was $2.1MW/m^2$ at APS $67{\mu}m$ and $428{\mu}m$ coating thicknesses, which is approximately double the CHF of a plain Cu surface. The enhancement of NBHT and CHF appeared to increase as the particle size increased in the tested range. However, two larger particle sizes ($25{\mu}m$ and $67{\mu}m$) showed a similar level of enhancement.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.41 no.7
• /
• pp.929-944
• /
• 2009

The present study is concerned with the extension of the Effective Convectivity Model (ECM) to the phase-change problem to simulate the dynamics of the melt pool formation in a Light Water Reactor (LWR) lower plenum during hypothetical severe accident progression. The ECM uses heat transfer characteristic velocities to describe turbulent natural convection of a melt pool. The simple approach of the ECM method allows implementing different models of the characteristic velocity in a mushy zone for non-eutectic mixtures. The Phase-change ECM (PECM) was examined using three models of the characteristic velocities in a mushy zone and its performance was compared. The PECM was validated using a dual-tier approach, namely validations against existing experimental data (the SIMECO experiment) and validations against results obtained from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The results predicted by the PECM implementing the linear dependency of mushy-zone characteristic velocity on fluid fraction are well agreed with the experimental correlation and CFD simulation results. The PECM was applied to simulation of melt pool formation heat transfer in a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) and Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) lower plenum. The study suggests that the PECM is an adequate and effective tool to compute the dynamics of core melt pool formation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.4
• /
• pp.1343-1354
• /
• 2022

Experiments were performed to measure the critical heat flux (CHF) on a vertical surface abutting a coarse packed bed of spherical particles. This geometry is representative of a CANDU reactor calandria tubesheet facing the end shield cavity during the in-vessel retention (IVR) phase of a severe accident. Deionized light water was used as the working fluid. Low carbon steel shielding balls with diameters ranging from 6.4 to 12.7 mm were used, allowing for the development of an empirical correlation of CHF as a function of shielding ball diameter. Previously published data is used to develop a more comprehensive empirical correlation accounting for the impacts of both shielding ball diameter and heating surface height. Tests using borosilicate shielding balls demonstrated that the dependence of CHF on shielding ball thermal conductivity is insignificant. The deposition of iron oxide particles transported from shielding balls to the heating surface is verified to increase CHF non-trivially. The results presented in this paper improve the state of the knowledge base permitting quantitative prediction of CHF in the CANDU end shield, refining our ability to assess the feasibility of IVR. The findings clarify the mechanisms governing CHF in this scenario, permitting identification of potential future research directions.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.78-87
• /
• 2015

Focusing effect of a metallic layer in a severe accident depending on the aspect ratios and cooling conditions of top plate and side wall was investigated. Experiments were carried out for Rayleigh numbers and aspect ratio in the range of $8.49{\times}10^7{\sim}5.43{\times}10^9$, 0.135~0.541 respectively. In order to achieve high Rayleigh numbers, the heat transfer experiments were replaced by mass transfer experiments based on the heat and mass transfer analogy. A sulfuric acid-copper sulfate ($H_2SO4-CuSO_4$) electroplating system was adopted as the mass transfer system. The experimental results agreed well with the Rayleigh-Benard natural convection correlations of Dropkin and Somerscales and Globe and Dropkin. When compared with the standard Rayleigh-Benard problem, the cooling by the side wall is even higher than the top. For a shorter height, the interaction between the heated and cooled plumes increases due to decrease of the height. Thus, the heat transfer increases.