• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.127-132
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• 2008

An experimental loop operating with water at supercritical conditions(25MPa, $600^{\circ}C$ in the test section) is designed for operation in the research reactor LVR-15 in UJV Rez, Czech Republic. The loop should serve as an experimental facility for corrosion tests of materials for in-core as well as out-of-core structures, for testing and optimization of suitable water chemistry for a future HPLWR and for studies of radiolysis of water at supercritical conditions, which remains the domain where very few experimental data are available. At present, final necessary calculations(thermalhydraulic, neutronic, strength) are being performed on the irradiation channel, which is the most challenging part of the loop. The concept of the primary and auxiliary circuits has been completed. The design of the loop shall be finished in the course of the year 2007 to start the construction, out-of-pile testing to verify proper functioning of all systems and as such to be ready for in-pile tests by the end of the HPLWR Phase 2 European project by the end of 2009.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.11
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• pp.4102-4111
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• 2023

In order to better perform thermal hydraulic calculation and analysis of supercritical water reactor, based on the experimental data of supercritical water, the model training and predictive analysis of the heat transfer coefficient of supercritical water were carried out by using the support vector machine (SVM) algorithm. The changes in the prediction accuracy of the supercritical water heat transfer coefficient are analyzed by the changes of the regularization penalty parameter C, the slack variable epsilon and the Gaussian kernel function parameter gamma. The predicted value of the SVM model obtained after parameter optimization and the actual experimental test data are analyzed for data verification. The research results show that: the normalization of the data has a great influence on the prediction results. The slack variable has a relatively small influence on the accuracy change range of the predicted heat transfer coefficient. The change of gamma has the greatest impact on the accuracy of the heat transfer coefficient. Compared with the calculation results of traditional empirical formula methods, the trained algorithm model using SVM has smaller average error and standard deviations. Using the SVM trained algorithm model, the heat transfer coefficient of supercritical water can be effectively predicted and analyzed.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.59 no.1
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• pp.85-93
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• 2021

For accurate and reliable process design for phenol oxidation in a plug flow reactor with supercritical water, modeling can be very insightful. Here, the velocity and density distribution along the reactor have been predicted by a numerical model and variations of temperature and phenol mass fraction are calculated under various flow conditions. The numerical model shows that as we proceed along the length of the reactor the temperature falls from above 430 ℃ to approximately 380 ℃. This is because the generated heat from the exothermic reaction is less that the amount lost through the walls of the reactor. Also, along the length, the linear velocity falls to less than one-third of the initial value while the density more than doubles. This is due to the fall in temperature which results in higher density which in turn demands a lower velocity to satisfy the continuity equation. Having a higher oxygen concentration at the reactor inlet leads to much faster phenol destruction; this leads to lower capital costs (shorter reactor will be required); however, the operational expenditures will increase for supplying the needed oxygen. The phenol destruction depends heavily on the kinetic parameters and can be as high as 99.9%. Using different kinetic parameters is shown to significantly influence the predicted distributions inside the reactor and final phenol conversion. These results demonstrate the importance of selecting kinetic parameters carefully particularly when these predictions are used for reactor design.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.273-286
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• 2007

This paper presents the research activities performed to date for the development of a supercritical pressure water-cooled reactor (SCWR) in Korea. The research areas include a conceptual design of an SCWR with an internal flow recirculation, a reactor core conceptual design, a heat transfer test with supercritical $CO_2$, an adaptation of an existing safety analysis code to the supercritical pressure condition, and an evaluation of candidate materials through a corrosion study. Methods to reduce the cladding temperature are introduced from two different perspectives, namely, thermal-hydraulics and core neutronics. Briefly described are the results of an experiment on the heat transfer at a supercritical pressure, an experiment that is essential for the analysis of the subchannels of fuel assemblies and the analysis of a system safety. An existing system code has been adapted to SCWR conditions, and the process of a first-hand validation is presented. Finally, the corrosion test results of the candidate materials for an SCWR are introduced.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.877-887
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• 2022

A new reactor concept is described that directly couples a supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂) power cycle with a CO₂-cooled, heavy water moderated pressure tube core. This configuration attains the simplification and economic potential of past direct-cycle sCO₂ concepts, while also providing safety and power density benefits by using the moderator as a heat sink for decay heat removal. A 200 MWe design is described that heavily leverages existing commercial nuclear technologies, including reactor and moderator systems from Canadian CANDU reactors and fuels and materials from UK Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs). Descriptions are provided of the power cycle, nuclear island systems, reactor core, and safety systems, and the results of safety analyses are shown illustrating the ability of the design to withstand large-break loss of coolant accidents. The resulting design attains high efficiency while employing considerably fewer systems than current light water reactors and advanced reactor technologies, illustrating its economic promise. Prospects for the design are discussed, including the ability to demonstrate its technologies in a small (~20 MWe) initial system, and avenues for further improvement of the design using advanced technologies.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.249-256
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• 2007

Light water reactors operated under supercritical pressure conditions have been selected as one of the promising future reactor concepts to be studied by the Generation IV International Forum. Whereas the steam cycle of such reactors can be derived from modem fossil fired power plants, the reactor itself, and in particular the reactor core, still need to be developed. Different core design concepts shall be described here to outline the strategy. A first option for near future applications is a pressurized water reactor with $380^{\circ}C$ core exit temperature, having a closed primary loop and achieving 2% pts. higher net efficiency and 24% higher specific turbine power than latest pressurized water reactors. More efficiency and turbine power can be gained from core exit temperatures around $500^{\circ}C$, which require a multi step heat up process in the core with intermediate coolant mixing, achieving up to 44% net efficiency. The paper summarizes different core and assembly design approaches which have been studied recently for such High Performance Light Water Reactors.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.1100-1108
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• 2021

Supercritical water has great potential as a coolant for nuclear reactor. Its use will lead to higher thermal efficiency of Rankine cycle. However, in certain conditions heat transfer may get deteriorated which may lead to undesirable high clad surface temperature. It is necessary to estimate the operating conditions in which heat transfer deterioration (HTD) will take place, so as to establish thermal margins for safe reactor operation. In the present work, the heat flux corresponding to onset of HTD for vertically upward flow of supercritical water in a pipe is obtained over a wide range of system parameters, namely pressure, mass flux, and pipe diameter. This is done by performing large number of simulations using an in-house CFD code, which is especially developed and validated for this purpose. The identification of HTD is based on observance of one or more peak/s in the computed wall temperature profile. The existing correlations for predicting the onset of HTD are compared against the results obtained by present simulations as well as available sets of experimental data. It is found that the prediction accuracy of the correlation proposed by Dongliang et al. is best among the existing correlations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.117-126
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• 2008

In this paper, a new reactor core design is proposed on the basis of a mixed core concept consisting of a thermal zone and a fast zone. The geometric structure of the fuel assembly of the thermal zone is similar to that of a conventional thermal supercritical water-cooled reactor(SCWR) core with two fuel pin rows between the moderator channels. In spite of the counter-current flow mode, the co-current flow mode is used to simplify the design of the reactor core and the fuel assembly. The water temperature at the exit of the thermal zone is much lower than the water temperature at the outlet of the pressure vessel. This lower temperature reduces the maximum cladding temperature of the thermal zone. Furthermore, due to the high velocity of the fast zone, a wider lattice can be used in the fuel assembly and the nonuniformity of the local heat transfer can be minimized. This mixed core, which combines the merits of some existing thermal SCWR cores and fast SCWR cores, is proposed for further detailed analysis.

• Plant Journal
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.60-65
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• 2008

As the operating conditions in a supercritical oxidation reactor are set in high temperature with high pressure causing a reactor suffering from the harsh circumstances. It means the reactor adopts itself with Fe-Cr alloy in acidic atmosphere with low pH value and Ni alloy in basic atmosphere with high pH value due to its superior corrosion resistance. The study, whose target waster water is pertinent to the latter part, has selected Ni alloy such as ostenite type stainless steel 304 and 316, superstainless steel AL6XN, Inconel 625, MAT 21, and titanium Gr. 5 in order to measure corrosion resistance against those samples under the same conditions of temperature and pressure applied for a supercritical oxidation reactor. The result shows the identifiable difference in corrosion resistance by observing the surface states through a scanning probe microscope as well as measuring the weight loss through making the samples above deposited in wastewater for two-week and four-week stay. The purpose of this corrosion experiment is to identify the most corrosion-resistant material among sample species pre-selected according to pH concentration of wastewater in pursue of applying for a reactor exposed to the extreme corrosion environment. It is because such a reactor made of a verified material enables to safeguard a stable operation under the supercritical wastewater processing facility.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1409-1416
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• 2020

The study of heat transfer coefficient of supercritical water plays an important role in improving the heat transfer efficiency of the reactor. Taking the supercritical natural circulation experimental bench as the research object, the effects of power, flow, pipe diameter and mainstream temperature on the heat transfer coefficient of supercritical water were studied. At the same time, the experimental data of Chen Yuzhou's supercritical water heat transfer coefficient was collected. Through the factorial design method, the influence of different factors and their interactions on the heat transfer coefficient of supercritical water is analyzed. Through the corresponding analysis method, the influencing factors of different levels of heat transfer coefficient are analyzed. It can be found: Except for the effects of flow rate, power, power-temperature and temperature, the influence of other factors on the natural circulation heat transfer coefficient of supercritical water is negligible. When the heat transfer coefficient is low, it is mainly affected by the pipe diameter. As the heat transfer coefficient is further increased, it is mainly affected by temperature and power. When the heat transfer coefficient is at a large level, the influence of the flow rate is the largest at this time.