• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.576-582
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• 1996

The integrity of reactor vessel support system of the Korean Standard Nuclear Power Plant (KSNPP) is investigated for a postulated reactor vessel closure head drop event. The closure head is disassembled from the reactor vessel during refueling process or general inspection of reactor vessel and internal structures, and carried to proposed location by the head lift rig. A postulated closure head drop event could be anticipated during closure head handling process. The drop event may cause an impact load on the reactor vessel and supporting system. The integrity of the supporting system is directly relevant to that of reactor vessel and reactor internals including fuels. Results derived by elastic impact analysis, linear and non-linear buckling analysis and elasto-plastic stress analysis of the supporting system implied that the integrity of the reactor vessel supporting system is intact for a postulated reactor vessel closure head drop event.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2000.11b
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• pp.228-233
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• 2000

The Korean Next Generation Reactor(KNGR) is a Pressurized Water Reactor adopting direct vessel injection(DVI) to optimize the performance of emergency core cooling system(ECCS). In a certain accident, however, pressurized thermal shock(PTS) of the vessel due to the sudden contact with the injected cold water is expected. In this paper, an accident of Main Steam Line Break(MSLB) has been numerically investigated with direct vessel injections and an increased volume flow rate in some cold legs. Using FLUENT code, temperature distributions of the fluid in the downcomer and of reactor vessel including the core region have been calculated, together with the distribution of convective heat transfer coefficient(CHTC) at the cladding surface of the reactor vessel. The result shows that some parts of the core region of the reactor vessel have higher temperature gradient expressing higher thermal stress.

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

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.66-73
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• 2015

Background: A numerical simulation was carried out to investigate the difference between internal and external heat-flux distributions at the reactor vessel wall under in-vessel retention through external reactor vessel cooling (IVR-ERVC). Methods: Total loss of feed water, station blackout, and large break loss of coolant accidents were selected as the severe accident scenarios, and a transient analysis using the element-birth-and-death technique was conducted to reflect the vessel erosion (vessel wall thickness change) effect. Results: It was found that the maximum heat flux at the focusing region was decreased at least 10% when considering the two-dimensional heat conduction at the reactor vessel wall. Conclusion: The results show that a higher thermal margin for the IVR-ERVC strategy can be achieved in the focusing region. In addition, sensitivity studies revealed that the heat flux and reactor vessel thickness are dominantly affected by the molten corium pool formation according to the accident scenario.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.373-380
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• 2014

Safety-related parameters are very important for confirming the status of a nuclear power plant. In particular, the reactor vessel water level has a direct impact on the safety fortress by confirming reactor core cooling. In this study, the reactor vessel water level under the condition of a severe accident, where the water level could not be measured, was predicted using a fuzzy neural network (FNN). The prediction model was developed using training data, and validated using independent test data. The data was generated from simulations of the optimized power reactor 1000 (OPR1000) using MAAP4 code. The informative data for training the FNN model was selected using the subtractive clustering method. The prediction performance of the reactor vessel water level was quite satisfactory, but a few large errors were occasionally observed. To check the effect of instrument errors, the prediction model was verified using data containing artificially added errors. The developed FNN model was sufficiently accurate to be used to predict the reactor vessel water level in severe accident situations where the integrity of the reactor vessel water level sensor is compromised. Furthermore, if the developed FNN model can be optimized using a variety of data, it should be possible to predict the reactor vessel water level precisely.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.7
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• pp.921-928
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• 2009

As part of an evaluation for an in-vessel severe accident management strategy, a coolant injection into the reactor vessel under depressurization of the reactor coolant system (RCS) has been evaluated in detail using the SCDAP/RELAP5 computer code. A high-pressure sequence of a small break loss of coolant accident (SBLOCA) has been analyzed in the Optimized Power Reactor (OPR) 1000. The SCDAP/RELAP5 results have shown that safety injection timing and capacity with RCS depressurization timing and capacity are very effective on the reactor vessel failure during a severe accident. Only one train operation of the high pressure safety injection (HPSI) for 30,000 seconds with RCS depressurization prevents failure of the reactor vessel. In this case, the operation of only the low pressure safety injection (LPSI) without a HPSI does not prevent failure of the reactor vessel.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1098-1103
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• 2011

The structural integrity of APR1400 reactor vessel internals has been being assessed referring the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulatory guide 1.20, comprehensive vibration assessment program. The program is composed of a vibration and stress analysis, a vibration and stress measurement, and an inspection. This paper covers the vibration and stress analysis on the reactor vessel internals by the pulsation of reactor coolant pump. 3-dimensional models to calculate the hydraulic loads and structural responses were built and the pressure distributions and the structural responses were predicted using ANSYS. This paper presents that APR1400 reactor vessel internals have enough structural integrity against the pulsation of reactor coolant pump as the peak stress of the reactor vessel internals is much lower than the acceptance limit.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.990-1001
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• 2004

The retention of a molten pool vessel cooled by internal vessel reflooding and/or external vessel reactor cavity flooding has been considered as one of severe accident management strategies. The present numerical study investigates the effect of both internal and external vessel mixed cooling on an internally heated molten pool. The molten pool is confined in a hemispherical vessel with reference to the thermal behavior of the vessel wall. In this study, our numerical model used a scaled-down reactor vessel of a KSNP (Korea Standard Nuclear Power) reactor design of 1000 MWe (a Pressurized Water Reactor with a large and dry containment). Well-known temperature-dependent boiling heat transfer curves are applied to the internal and external vessel cooling boundaries. Radiative heat transfer has been considered in the case of dry internal vessel boundary condition. Computational results show that the external cooling vessel boundary conditions have better effectiveness than internal vessel cooling in the retention of the melt pool vessel failure.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.237-248
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• 2012

Corium behavior in the lower plenum of the reactor vessel during a severe accident is very important, as this affects a failure mechanism of the lower head vessel and a thermal load to the outer reactor vessel under the IVR-ERVC (In-Vessel corium Retention through External Reactor Vessel Cooling) condition. This paper discusses the state of the art and technical issues on corium behavior in the lower plenum, such as initial corium pool formation characteristics and its transient behavior, natural convection heat transfer in various geometries, natural convection heat transfer with a phase change of melting and solidification, and corium interaction with a lower head vessel including penetrations of the ICI (In-Core Instrumentation) nozzle are discussed. It is recommended that more detailed analysis and experiments are necessary to solve the uncertainties of corium behavior in the lower plenum of the reactor vessel.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.70-77
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• 2016

In this paper, the structural design and integrity evaluations for a reactor vessel of PGSFR sodium-cooled fast reactor(150MWe) are carried out in compliance with ASME BPV III, Division 5 Subsection HB. The reactor vessel is designed with a direct contact of primary sodium coolant to its inner surface and has a double vessel concept enclosing by containment vessel. To assure the structural integrity for 60 years design lifetime and elevated operating temperature of $545^{\circ}C$, which can invoke creep and creep-fatigue damage, the structural integrity evaluations are carried out in compliance with the ASME code rules. The design loads considered in this evaluations are primary loads and operation thermal cycling loads of normal heat-up and cool-down. From the evaluations, the PGSFR reactor vessel satisfies the ASME code limits but it was found that there is a little design margin of creep damage for inner surface at the region of cold pool free surface.