• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.1088-1099
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• 2021

Time-frequency analysis technique is an effective analysis tool for non-stationary processes. In the field of reactor neutron noise, the time-frequency analysis method has not been thoroughly researched and widely used. This work has studied the time-frequency analysis of the reactor neutron noise experimental signals under bubble disturbance and control rod vibration. First, an experimental platform was established, and it could be employed to reactor neutron noise experiment and data acquisition. Secondly, two types of reactor neutron noise experiments were performed, and valid experimental data was obtained. Finally, time-frequency analysis was conducted on the experimental data, and effective analysis results were obtained in the low-frequency part. Through this work, it can be concluded that the time-frequency analysis technique can effectively investigate the core dynamics behavior and deepen the identification of the unstable core process.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.12
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• pp.4003-4013
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• 2021

During the long-term cooling (LTC) phase of a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) in a pressurized water reactor (PWR), water is supplied from the containment sump to the reactor coolant system (RCS) by the flooded sump water to the Reactor Vessel (RV) through the broken pipes. As part of the technical efforts for resolving GSI-191 [( Reid and Crytzer, May. 2007) 1, consideration is needed for the consequences of debris penetrating the sump screen and propagating downstream into the RV. Injection of debris (fiberglass) into the RV during the LTC recirculation phase needs special attention to assure that reactor core cooling is maintained. The point of concern is the potential for debris to adversely affect the reactor core flow paths or heat transfer [2]. However, all the experiments for proving the coolability of RV have been done with the assumption of the most of debris would be transferred to the RV and the bottom nozzle of the FAs. The purpose of the tests is to quantify the amount of the debris that would be accumulated at the lower plenum and the debris that passes through the FAs since non-conservatism of other researches assumptions that have been used in the past experimental or analytical programs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.11
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• pp.4266-4273
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• 2023

In a severe reactor accident, a crust will form on the surface of the molten material during the core melting process. The crust will have a contact melting with the internal components of the reactor. In this paper, the contact melting process of the molten material on the austenitic stainless steel plate bundles is studied. The contact melting model of parabolic molten material on the plate bundles is proposed, and the rule and main effect factors of the contact melting are analyzed. The results show that the melting velocity is proportional to the slope of the paraboloid, the heat flux and the distance between two plates D. The influence of melt gravity and the plate width on melting velocity is negligible. The thickness of the molten liquid film is proportional to the heat flux and plate width, and it is inversely proportional to the gravity. With the increase of D, the liquid film thickness decreases at first and then increases gradually. The liquid film thickness has a minimum against D. When the width of the plate is small, the width of the plate is the main factor affecting the thickness of the liquid film. The parameters are coupled with each other. In a severe reactor accident, the wider internal components of reactor, which can increase the thickness of the melting liquid film and reduce the net input heat flux from the molten material to the components, are the effective measures to delay the melting process.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.7
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• pp.2458-2473
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• 2024

The turbulent flow in reactor pressure vessel (RPV) of pressurized water reactor (PWR) is important for the flow rate distribution at core inlet. Thus, it is vital to study the turbulent flow phenomena in RPV. However, the complicated fluid channel consisted of inner structures of RPV will block or refract the laser sheet of particle image velocimetry (PIV). In this work, the matched index of refraction (MIR) of sodium iodide (NaI) solution and acrylic was applied to support optical path for flow field measurements by PIV in the 1/10th scaled-down RPV model. The experimental results show detailed velocity field at different locations inside the scaled-down RPV model. Some interesting phenomena are obtained, including the non-negligible counterflow at the corner of nozzle edge, the high downward flowing stream in downcomer, large vortices above vortex suppression plate in lower plenum. And the intensity of counterflow and the strength of vortices increase as inlet flow rate increasing. Finally, the case of asymmetry flow was also studied. The turbulent flow has different pattern compared with the case of symmetrical inlet flow rate, which may affect the uniformity of flow distribution at the core inlet.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.144-155
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• 2023

The core catcher is used as a passive safety system in new generation nuclear power plants to create a space in the containment for the placing and cooling of the molten corium under various severe accidents. This research investigates the role of the core catcher in the VVER-1000 reactor containment system in mitigating the effects of core meltdown under various severe accidents within the context of the Ex-vessel Melt Retention (EVMR) strategy. Hence, a comparison study of three severe accidents is conducted, including Station Black-Out (SBO), SBO combined with the Large Break Loss of Coolant Accident (LB-LOCA), and SBO combined with the Small Break Loss of Coolant Accident (SB-LOCA). Numerical comparative simulations are performed for the aforementioned scenario with and without the EX-vessel core-catcher. The results showed that considering the EX-Vessel core catcher reduces the amount of hydrogen by about 18.2 percent in the case of SBO + LB-LOCA, and hydrogen production decreases by 12.4 percent in the case of SBO + SB-LOCA. Furthermore, in the presence of an EX-Vessel core-catcher, the production of gases such as CO and CO2 for the SBO accident is negligible. It was revealed that the greatest decrease in pressure and temperature of the containment is related to the SBO accident.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.10b
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• pp.104-106
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• 2005

In this work, a PWR reactor core dynamics is identified online by a recursive least squares method. Based on this identified reactor model consisting of the control rod position and the core average coolant temperature, the future average coolant temperature is predicted. A model predictive control method is applied to design an automatic controller for thermal power control in PWRs. The basic concept of the model predictive control is to solve an optimization problem for a finite future at current time and to implement as the current control input only the first optimal control input among the solutions of the finite time steps. At the next time step, the procedure to solve the optimization problem is then repeated. The objectives of the proposed model predictive controller are to minimize both the difference between the predicted core coolant temperature and the desired one, and the variation of the control rod positions. Also, the objectives are subject to maximum and minimum control rod positions and maximum control rod speed. Therefore, the genetic algorithm that is appropriate to accomplish multiple objectives is used to optimize the model predictive controller. A 3-dimensional nuclear reactor analysis code, MASTER that was developed by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), is used to verify the proposed controller for a nuclear reactor. From results of numerical simulation to check the performance of the proposed controller at the 5%/min ramp increase or decrease of a desired load and its 10% step increase or decrease which are design requirements, it was found that the nuclear power level controlled by the proposed controller could track the desired power level very well.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.7
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• pp.735-744
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• 2012

In order to quantify the flow distribution characteristics of APR+ reactor, a test was performed on a test facility, ACOP ($\underline{A}$PR+ $\underline{C}$ore Flow & $\underline{P}$ressure Test Facility), having a length scale of 1/5 referring to the prototype plant. The major parameters are core inlet flow and outlet pressure distribution and sectional pressure drops along the major flow path inside reactor vessel. To preserve the flow characteristics of prototype plant, the test facility was designed based on a preservation of major flow path geometry. An Euler number is considered as primary dimensionless parameter, which is conserved with a 1/40.9 of Reynolds number scaling ratio. ACOP simplifies each fuel assembly into a hydraulic simulator having the same axial flow resistance and lateral cross flow characteristics. In order to supply boundary condition to estimate thermal margins of the reactor, the distribution of inlet core flow and core exit pressure were measured in each of 257 fuel assembly simulators. In total, 584 points of static pressure and differential pressures were measured with a limited number of differential pressure transmitters by developing a sequential operation system of valves. In the current study, reactor flow characteristics under the balanced four-cold leg flow conditions at each of the cold legs were quantified, which is a part of the test matrix composing the APR+ flow distribution test program. The final identification of the reactor flow distribution was obtained by ensemble averaging 15 independent test data. The details of the design of the test facility, experiment, and data analysis are included in the current paper.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.9
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• pp.855-862
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• 2013

A series of 1/5 scale-down reactor flow distribution tests had been conducted to determine the hydraulic characteristics of an APR+ (Advanced Power Reactor Plus), which were used as the input data for an open core thermal margin analysis code. In this study, to examine the applicability of computational fluid dynamics with the porous model to the analysis of APR+ internal flow, simulations were conducted using the commercial multi-purpose computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS CFX V.14. It was concluded that the porous domain approach for some reactor internal structures could adequately predict the flow characteristics inside a reactor in a qualitative manner. If sufficient computational resources are available, the predicted core inlet flow distribution is expected to be more accurate by considering the real geometry of the internal structures, especially upstream of the core inlet.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.181-194
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• 1984

The in-core fuel management problem was studied by use of the calculus of variations. Two functions of interest to a public power utility, the profit function and the cost function, were subjected to the constraints of criticality, the reactor turnup equations and an inequality constraint on the maximum allowable power density. The variational solution of the initial profit rate demonstrated that there are two distinct regions of the reactor, a constant power region and a minimum inventory or flat thermal flux region. The transition point between these regions is dependent on the relative importance of the profit for generating power and the interest charges for the fuel. The fuel cycle cost function was then used to optimize a three equal volume region reactor with a constant fuel enrichment. The inequality constraint on the maximum allowable power density requires that the inequality become an equality constraint at some points in the reactor. and at all times throughout the core cycle. The finite difference equations for reactor criticality and fuel burnup in conjunction with the equality constraint on power density were solved, and the method of gradients was used to locate an optimum enrichment. The results of this calculation showed that standard non-linear optimization techniques can be used to optimize a reactor when the inequality constraints are properly applied.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.2789-2802
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• 2020

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are attracting wide attention due to their outstanding performance, extensive studies have been carried out for lead-based fast reactors (LFRs) that cooled with Lead or Lead-bismuth (LBE), and small modular natural circulation LFR is one of the promising candidates for SMRs and LFRs development. One of the challenges for the design small modular natural circulation LFR is to master the natural circulation thermal-hydraulic performance in the reactor primary circuit, while the natural circulation characteristics is a coupled thermal-hydraulic problem of the core thermal power, the primary loop layout and the operating state of secondary cooling system etc. Thus, accurate predicting the natural circulation LFRs thermal-hydraulic features are highly required for conducting reactor operating condition evaluate and Thermal hydraulic design optimization. In this study, a thermal-hydraulic analysis code is developed for small modular natural circulation LFRs, which is based on several mathematical models for natural circulation originally. A small modular natural circulation LBE cooled fast reactor named URANUS developed by Korea is chosen to assess the code's capability. Comparisons are performed to demonstrate the accuracy of the code by the calculation results of MARS, and the key thermal-hydraulic parameters agree fairly well with the MARS ones. As a typical application case, steady-state analyses were conducted to have an assessment of thermal-hydraulic behavior under nominal condition, and several parameters affecting natural circulation were evaluated. What's more, two characteristics parameters that used to analyze natural circulation LFRs natural circulation capacity were established. The analyses show that the core thermal power, thermal center difference and flow resistance is the main factors affecting the reactor natural circulation. Improving the core thermal power, increasing the thermal center difference and decreasing the flow resistance can significantly increase the reactor mass flow rate. Characteristics parameters can be used to quickly evaluate the natural circulation capacity of natural circulation LFR under normal operating conditions.