• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제39권4호
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• pp.257-272
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• 2007

Supercritical water-cooled reactors (SCWRs) are recognized as a Generation IV reactor concept. The Super LWR is a pressure-vessel type thermal spectrum SCWR with downward-flow water rods and is currently under study at the University of Tokyo. This paper reviews Super LWR safety. The fundamental requirement for the Super LWR, which has a once-through coolant cycle, is the core coolant flow rate rather than the coolant inventory. Key safety characteristics of the Super LWR inhere in the design features and have been identified through a series of safety analyses. Although loss-of-flow is the most important abnormality, fuel rod heat-up is mitigated by the "heat sink" and "water source" effects of the water rods. Response of the reactor power against pressurization events is mild due to a small change in the average coolant density and flow stagnation of the once-through coolant cycle. These mild responses against transients and also reactivity feedbacks provide good inherent safety against anticipated-transient-without-scram (ATWS) events without alternative actions. Initiation of an automatic depressurization system provides effective heat removal from the fuel rods. An "in-vessel accumulator" effect of the reactor vessel top dome enhances the fuel rod cooling. This effect enlarges the safety margin for large LOCA.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권7호
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• pp.2660-2669
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• 2022

The attractiveness for weapons usage of the proposed fuel cycle for the PT-SCWR was evaluated in this study using the Figure-of-Merit methodology. It was compared to the attractiveness of other fuel cycles namely, Low Enriched Uranium (LEU), U/Th, Re-enriched Reprocessed Uranium (RepU), and Pu/Th/U. The optimal content of natural uranium, which can be added to Pu/Th to render the produced U-233 unattractive, was found to be 9%. A ranking system to compare the attractiveness of the various fuel cycles is proposed. RepU was found to be the most proliferation resistant fuel cycle for the first 100 years,while, the least proliferation resistant fuel cycle was the originally proposed Pu/Th one. The reactivity feedback coefficients were calculated for all proposed fuel cycles. All studied reactivity coefficients have the same sign implying that all the fuel cycles will behave neutronically in a similar way. The Pu/Th/U fuel was found to have the most negative value of the Coolant Void Reactivity which will help to restore the core to a safe status faster in case of a loss-of-coolant accident. The fuel and moderator temperature coefficients did not show significant differences between the fuels studied.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권3호
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• pp.842-848
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• 2022

Parametric studies of heat transfer and fluid flow are very important research of interest because the design and operation of fluid flow and heat transfer systems are guided by these parametric studies. The safety of the system operation and system optimization can be determined by decreasing or increasing particular fluid flow and heat transfer parameter while keeping other parameters constant. The parameters that can be varied in order to determine safe and optimized system include system pressure, mass flow rate, heat flux and coolant inlet temperature among other parameters. The fluid flow and heat transfer systems can also be enhanced by the presence of or without the presence of particular effects including gravity effect among others. The advanced Generation IV reactors to be deployed for large electricity production, have proven to be more thermally efficient (approximately 45% thermal efficiency) than the current light water reactors with a thermal efficiency of approximately 33 ℃. SCWR is one of the Generation IV reactors intended for electricity generation. High Performance Light Water Reactor (HPLWR) is a SCWR type which is under consideration in this study. One-eighth of a proposed fuel assembly design for HPLWR consisting of 7 fuel/rod bundles with 9 coolant sub-channels was the geometry considered in this study to examine the effects of system pressure and mass flow rate on wall and fluid temperatures. Gravity effect on wall and fluid temperatures were also examined on this one-eighth fuel assembly geometry. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code, STAR-CCM+, was used to obtain the results of the numerical simulations. Based on the parametric analysis carried out, sub-channel 4 performed better in terms of heat transfer because temperatures predicted in sub-channel 9 (corner subchannel) were higher than the ones obtained in sub-channel 4 (central sub-channel). The influence of system mass flow rate, pressure and gravity seem similar in both sub-channels 4 and 9 with temperature distributions higher in sub-channel 9 than in sub-channel 4. In most of the cases considered, temperature distributions (for both fluid and wall) obtained at 25 MPa are higher than those obtained at 23 MPa, temperature distributions obtained at 601.2 kg/h are higher than those obtained at 561.2 kg/h, and temperature distributions obtained without gravity effect are higher than those obtained with gravity effect. The results show that effects of system pressure, mass flowrate and gravity on fluid flow and heat transfer are significant and therefore parametric studies need to be performed to determine safe and optimum operating conditions of fluid flow and heat transfer systems.

• 대한기계학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한기계학회 2007년도 춘계학술대회B
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• pp.3395-3400
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• 2007

Heat transfer experiments at a vertical annulus passage were carried out in the SPHINX(Supercritical Pressure Heat Transfer Investigation for NeXt Generation) to investigate the heat transfer behaviors of supercritical $CO_2$. The collected test data are to be used for the reactor core design of the SCWR (SuperCritical Water-cooled Reactor). The mass flux was in the range of 400${\sim}$1200 kg/$m^2$s and the heat flux was chosen up to 150 kW/$m^2$. The selected pressures were 7.75 and 8.12 MPa. The heat transfer data were analyzed and compared with the previous tube test data. The test results showed that the heat transfer characteristics were similar to those of the tube in case of a normal heat transfer mode and degree of heat transfer deterioration became smaller than that in the tube. Comparison of the experimental heat transfer coefficients with the predicted ones by the existing correlations showed that there was not a distinct difference between the correlations.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국전산유체공학회 2008년도 춘계학술대회논문집
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• pp.292-295
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• 2008

In a SCWR (SuperCritical pressure Water cooled Reactor), the coolant temperature initially at below the pseudo-critical temperature at the bottom of a reactor core increases as the coolant flows upward through the sub-channels of the fuel assemblies, and it finally becomes higher than the pseudo-critical temperature when it leaves the reactor core. At certain conditions, heat transfer deterioration occurs near the pseudo-critical temperature and it may cause a drastic rise of the fuel surface temperature resulting a fuel failure. Therefore, an accurate estimation of the heat transfer coefficient is very important for the thermal-hydraulic design of a reactor core. An experiment on heat transfer to the vertically upward flowing $CO_2$ at a supercritical pressure in a circular tube were performed at KAERI. The internal diameter of the test section is 6.32 mm, which corresponds to the hydraulic diameter of a sub-channel in the conceptional design proposed by KAERI. The test range of the mass flux is 285 to 1200 kg/m$^2$s and the maximum heat flux is 170 kW/m$^2$. The inlet pressure is maintained at 8.12 MPa, which is 1.1 times the critical pressure. A new correlation, which covers both the normal and deterioration heat transfer regimes was proposed and compared with the estimations by exiting correlations.

• 대한기계학회논문집B
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• 제35권1호
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• pp.23-31
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• 2011

원자로의 안전을 확보하고 운전성능을 정확히 예측하기 위해서는 핵연료에서 초임계압 냉각재로 전달되는 열전달량을 예측하는 것이 매우 중요하다. 초임계압 유체에서 열전달은 유사임계온도 부근에서 급격하게 변화하는 물성의 영향을 크게 받아 열전달량이 증가하기도 하고, 특정한 질량유속과 열유속 조건에서는 열전달량이 감소하는 현상을 보이기도 한다. 본 연구에서는 초임계압수냉각로(SCWR)의 핵연료집합체 부수로의 수력 직경과 유사한 내경 4.57 mm 원형관 안에서 상 하향 방향으로 흐르는 $CO_2$로 전달되는 열전달량(실제로는 원형관 외벽온도)을 다양한 조건에서 측정하고 분석하였다. 총 7,250개의 실험결과를 기존의 초임계압 강제대류 상관식들로 예측한 결과와 비교하여 그 상관식들의 정확성을 검토하였으며, 부력매개변수 $\overline{Gr}_b/(Re^{2.7}_b\overline{Pr}^{0.5}_b})$를 도입하여 혼합대류 영역에서도 적용할 수 있도록 기존의 상관식을 확장하였다. 그리고 기존의 열전달열화 발생 조건을 본 실험의 열전달열화 조건과 비교하여 적용성을 평가하였다.