• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.693-694
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• 2005

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.776-792
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• 2021

Conventional integral effect test facilities were constructed to enable the precise observation of thermal-hydraulic phenomena and reactor behaviors under postulated accident conditions to prove reactor safety. Although these facilities improved the understanding of thermal-hydraulic phenomena and reactor safety, applications of new technologies and their performance tests have been limited owing to the cost and large scale of the facilities. Various nuclear technologies converging 4th industrial revolution technologies such as artificial intelligence, drone, and 3D printing, are being developed to improve plant management strategies. Additionally, new conceptual passive safety systems are being developed to enhance reactor safety. A new integral effect test facility having a noticeable scaling ratio, i.e., the (UNIST reactor innovation loop (URI-LO), is designed and constructed to improve the technical quality of these technologies by performance and feasibility tests. In particular, the URI-LO, which is constructed using a transparent material, enables better visualization and provides physical insights on multidimensional phenomena inside the reactor system. The facility design based on three-level approach is qualitatively validated with preliminary analyses, and its functionality as a test facility is confirmed through a series of experiments. The design feature, design validation, functionality test, and future utilization of the URI-LO are introduced.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.347-360
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• 2013

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the small-break loss-of-coolant accident (SBLOCA) and the loss-of-feedwater accident (LOFW) in a scaled integral test facility of REX-10. REX-10 is a small integral-type PWR in which the coolant flow is driven by natural circulation, and the RCS is pressurized by the steam-gas pressurizer. The postulated accidents of REX-10 include the system depressurization initiated by the break of a nitrogen injection line connected to the steam-gas pressurizer and the complete loss of normal feedwater flow by the malfunction of control systems. The integral effect tests on SBLOCA and LOFW are conducted at the REX-10 Test Facility (RTF), a full-height full-pressure facility with reduced power by 1/50. The SBLOCA experiment is initiated by opening a flow passage out of the pressurizer vessel, and the LOFW experiment begins with the termination of the feedwater supply into the helical-coil steam generator. The experimental results reveal that the RTF can assure sufficient cooldown capability with the simulated PRHRS flow during these DBAs. In particular, the RTF exhibits faster pressurization during the LOFW test when employing the steam-gas pressurizer than the steam pressurizer. This experimental study can provide unique data to validate the thermal-hydraulic analysis code for REX-10.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.9
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• pp.3551-3566
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• 2022

The STELLA program was launched to support the PGSFR development in 2012 and for the 2nd stage, the STELLA-2 facility was designed to investigate the integral effect of safety systems including the comprehensive interaction among PHTS, IHTS and DHRS. In STELLA-2, the long-term transient behavior after accidents can be observed and the overall safety aspect can also be evaluated. In this paper, the basic design concept from engineering basis to specific design is described. The design was aimed to meet similarity criteria and requirements based on various non-dimensional numbers and the result satisfied the key features to explain the reasoning of safety evaluation. The result of this study was used to construct the facility and the experiment is on-going. In general, the final design meets the similarity criteria of the multidimensional physics inside the reactor pool. And also, for the conservation of natural circulation phenomena, the design meets the similarity requirements of geometry and thermo-dynamic behavior.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.7
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• pp.1537-1546
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• 2017

Many thermal-hydraulic tests have been conducted at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute for verification of the SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor) design, the standard design approval of which was issued by the Korean regulatory body. In this paper, the contributions of these tests to the standard design approval of SMART are discussed. First, an integral effect test facility named VISTA-ITL (Experimental Verification by Integral Simulation of Transients and Accidents-Integral Test Loop) has been utilized to assess the TASS/SMR-S (Transient and Set-point Simulation/Small and Medium) safety analysis code and confirm its conservatism, to support standard design approval, and to construct a database for the SMART design optimization. In addition, many separate effect tests have been performed. The reactor internal flow test has been conducted using the SCOP (SMART COre flow distribution and Pressure drop test) facility to evaluate the reactor internal flow and pressure distributions. An ECC (Emergency Core Coolant) performance test has been carried out using the SWAT (SMART ECC Water Asymmetric Two-phase choking test) facility to evaluate the safety injection performance and to validate the thermal-hydraulic model used in the safety analysis code. The Freon CHF (Critical Heat Flux) test has been performed using the FTHEL (Freon Thermal Hydraulic Experimental Loop) facility to construct a database from the $5{\times}5$ rod bundle Freon CHF tests and to evaluate the DNBR (Departure from Nucleate Boiling Ratio) model in the safety analysis and core design codes. These test results were used for standard design approval of SMART to verify its design bases, design tools, and analysis methodology.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.2477-2487
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• 2021

To improve safety analysis technology for a nuclear reactor containment considering an interaction between a reactor coolant system (RCS) and containment, this study aims at an experimental investigation on the integrated simulation of the RCS and containment, with an integral effect test facility, ATLAS-CUBE. For a realistic simulation of a pressure and temperature (P/T) transient, the containment simulation vessel was designed to preserve a volumetric scale equivalently to the RCS volume scale of ATLAS. Three test cases for a steam line break (SLB) transient were conducted with variation of the initial condition of the passive heat sink or the steam flow direction. The test results indicated a stratified behavior of the steam-gas mixture in the containment following a high-temperature steam injection in prior to the spray injection. The test case with a reduced heat transfer on the passive heat sink showed a faster increase of the P/T inside the containment. The effect of the steam flow direction was also investigated with respect to a multi-dimensional distribution of the local heat transfer on the passive heat sink. The integral effect test data obtained in this study will contribute to validating the evaluation methodology for mass and energy (M/E) and P/T transient of the containment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2438-2446
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• 2023

To cool down a nuclear reactor core and prevent the fuel damage without a pump-driven active component during any anticipated accident, the passive emergency core cooling system (PECCS) was designed and adopted in an advanced light water reactor, i-POWER. In this study, for a validation of the cooling capability of PECCS, thermal-hydraulic integral effect tests were performed with the ATLAS facility by simulating intermediate and small break loss-of-coolant accidents (IBLOCA and SBLOCA). The test result showed that PECCS could effectively depressurize the reactor coolant system by supplying the safety injection water from the safety injection tanks (SITs). The result pointed out that the safety injection from IRWST should have been activated earlier to inhibit the excessive core heat-up. The sequence of the PECCS injection and the major thermal hydraulic transient during the SBLOCA transient was similar to the result of the IBLOCA test with the equivalent PECCS condition. The test data can be used to evaluate the capability of thermal hydraulic safety analysis codes in predicting IBLOCA and SBLOCA transients under an operation of passive safety system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.199-212
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• 2008

A small-break loss of coolant accident (SB-LOCA) test with a break size equivalent to a 3-inch cold leg break of the APR1400 was carried out as the first transient integral effect test using the ATLAS (Advanced Thermal-hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation). This was the first integral effect test to investigate the integral performance of the test facility and to verify its simulation capability for one of the design-basis accidents. Reasonably good thermal hydraulic data was obtained so that an integral performance of the fluid sub-systems was identified and control performance of the ATLAS was confirmed under real thermal hydraulic conditions. Based on the measured data, a post-test calculation was carried out using the best-estimate thermal hydraulic safety analysis code, MARS 3.1, and the similarity between the expected and actual data was investigated. On the whole, the post-test calculation reasonably predicts the major thermal hydraulic parameters measured during the SB-LOCA test. The obtained data will be used to enhance the simulation capability of the ATLAS and to improve an input model of the ATLAS for simulation of other target scenarios.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.597-610
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• 2012

The passive auxiliary feedwater system (PAFS) is one of the advanced safety features adopted in the APR+, which is intended to completely replace the conventional active auxiliary feedwater system. With an aim of validating the cooling and operational performance of PAFS, an experimental program is in progress at KAERI, which is composed of two kinds of tests; the separate effect test and the integral effect test. The separate effect test, PASCAL ($\underline{P}$AF$\underline{S}$ $\underline{C}$ondensing Heat Removal $\underline{A}$ssessment $\underline{L}$oop), is being performed to experimentally investigate the condensation heat transfer and natural convection phenomena in PAFS. A single, nearly-horizontal U-tube, whose dimensions are the same as the prototypic U-tube of the APR+ PAFS, is simulated in the PASCAL test. The PASCAL experimental result showed that the present design of PAFS satisfied the heat removal requirement for cooling down the reactor core during the anticipated accident transients. The integral effect test is in progress to confirm the operational performance of PAFS, coupled with the reactor coolant systems using the ATLAS facility. As the first integral effect test, an FLB (feedwater line break) accident was simulated for the APR+. From the integral effect test result, it could be concluded that the APR+ has the capability of coping with the hypothetical FLB accident by adopting PAFS and proper set-points of its operation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.7
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• pp.2702-2713
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• 2022

A steam generator tube rupture accompanying a core damage may cause the fission product to be released to environment bypassing the containment. In such an accident, the steam generator is the major path of the radioactive aerosol release. AEOLUS facility, the scaled-down model of Korean type steam generator, was built to examine the aerosol removal in the steam generator during the steam generator tube rupture accident. Integral and separate effect tests were performed with the facility for the dry and flooded conditions, and the decontamination factors were presented for different tube configurations and submergences. The dry test results were compared with the existing test results and with the analyses to investigate the aerosol retention physics by the tube bundle, with respect to the particle size and the bundle geometry. In the flooded tests, the effect of submergence were shown and the retention in the jet injection region were presented with respect to the Stokes number. The test results are planned to be used to constitute the aerosol retention model, specifically applicable for the analysis of the steam generator tube rupture accident in Korean nuclear power plants to evaluate realistic fission product behavior.