• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 2005.10a
• /
• pp.677-678
• /
• 2005

• Journal of Drive and Control
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.1-8
• /
• 2021

In this work, a circuit with a hydraulic power unit is formulated as a means of predicting the behavior of the prefill valve in the future. The behavior of the prefill valve can be examined by the measurements of the configured power unit, and the performance is determined by using hydraulic pumps, relief valves, and hydraulic hoses that make up the power unit. In particular, pressure/flow pulsation generated by hydraulic pumps can cause instability in the prefill valve and cause noise-induced degradation of the overall performance and reliability of the hydraulic system containing the prefill valve. Therefore, to study the behavior and performance of the prefill valve in a relatively accurate manner, the prediction of the characteristics of the hydraulic power unit driving the prefill valve is very important. In this study, the pulsation characteristics of the hydraulic pump were analyzed to theoretically demonstrate its relationship with different settings of the power unit, such as relief valve pressure settings and the presence/absence of the hose.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
• /
• v.40 no.3
• /
• pp.165-172
• /
• 2016

An experimental study of the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of passive safety systems (PSSs) was conducted using a system-integrated modular advanced reactor-integral test loop (SMART-ITL). The present passive safety injection system for the SMART-ITL consists of one train with the core makeup tank (CMT), the safety injection tank, and the automatic depressurization system. The objective of this study is to investigate the injection effect of the PSS on the small-break loss-of-coolant accident (SBLOCA) scenario for a 0.4 inch line break in the safety-injection system (SIS). The steady-state condition was maintained for 746 seconds before the break. When the major parameters of the target value and test results were compared, most of the thermal-hydraulic parameters agreed closely with each other. The water level of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) was maintained higher than that of the fuel assembly plate during the transient, for the present CMT and safety injection tank (SIT) flow rate conditions. It can be seen that the capability of an emergency core cooling system is sufficient during the transient with SMART passive SISs.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2005.06a
• /
• pp.701-704
• /
• 2005

Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) can be a cost-effective and renewable geothermal energy source, depending on site-specific and thermohydraulic conditions. To design an effective ATES system having influenced by groundwater movement, understanding of thermo hydraulic processes is necessary. The heat transfer phenomena for an aquifer heat storage are simulated using FEFLOW with the scenario of heat pump operation with pumping and waste water reinjection in a two layered confined aquifer model. Temperature distribution of the aquifer model is generated, and hydraulic heads and temperature variations are monitored at the both wells during 365 days. The average groundwater velocities are determined with two hydraulic gradient sets according to boundary conditions, and the effect of groundwater flow are shown at the generated thermal distributions of three different depth slices. The generated temperature contour lines at the hydraulic gradient of 0.00 1 are shaped circular, and the center is moved less than 5m to the groundwater flow direction in 365 days simulation period. However at the hydraulic gradient of 0.01, the contour center of the temperature are moved to the end of boundary at each slice and the largest movement is at bottom slice. By the analysis of thermal interference data between two wells the efficiency of the heat pump system model is validated, and the variation of heads is monitored at injection, pumping and no operation mode.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.4
• /
• pp.1555-1562
• /
• 2023

Natural circulation phenomena have been nowadays largely revisited aiming to investigate the performances of passive safety systems in carrying-out heat removal under accidental conditions. For this purpose, assessment studies using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and also 3D thermal-hydraulic system codes are considered at different levels of the design and safety demonstration issues. However, these tools have not being extensively validated for specific natural circulation flow regimes involving flow mixing, temperature stratification, flow recirculation and instabilities. In the present study, an experimental test case based on a small-scale pool test rig experiment performed by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, is considered for code-to-code and code-to-experimental data comparison. The test simulation is carried out using the FLUENT and the 3D thermal-hydraulic system CATHARE-2 codes. The objective is to evaluate and compare their prediction capabilities with respect to the test conditions of the experiment. It was observed that, notwithstanding their numerical and modelling differences, similar agreement results are obtained. Nevertheless, additional investigations efforts are still needed for a better representation of the considered phenomena.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.56 no.6
• /
• pp.2343-2351
• /
• 2024

Accurately predicting the thermal hydraulic parameters of a transient reactor core under different working conditions is the first step toward reactor safety. Mass flow rate and temperature are important parameters of core thermal hydraulics, which have often been modeled as time series prediction problems. This study aims to achieve accurate and continuous prediction of core thermal hydraulic parameters under instantaneous conditions, as well as test the feasibility of a newly constructed gated recurrent unit (GRU) model based on the soft attention mechanism for core parameter predictions. Herein, the China Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) is used as the research object, and CEFR 1/2 core was taken as subject to carry out continuous predictive analysis of thermal parameters under transient conditions., while the subchannel analysis code named SUBCHANFLOW is used to generate the time series of core thermal-hydraulic parameters. The GRU model is used to predict the mass flow and temperature time series of the core. The results show that compared to the adaptive radial basis function neural network, the GRU network model produces better prediction results. The average relative error for temperature is less than 0.5 % when the step size is 3, and the prediction effect is better within 15 s. The average relative error of mass flow rate is less than 5 % when the step size is 10, and the prediction effect is better in the subsequent 12 s. The GRU model not only shows a higher prediction accuracy, but also captures the trends of the dynamic time series, which is useful for maintaining reactor safety and preventing nuclear power plant accidents. Furthermore, it can provide long-term continuous predictions under transient reactor conditions, which is useful for engineering applications and improving reactor safety.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.44 no.6
• /
• pp.561-586
• /
• 2012

This paper describes a summary of final prediction results by system-scale safety analysis codes during the OECD/NEA/CSNI ISP-50 exercise, targeting a 50% Direct Vessel Injection (DVI) line break integral effect test performed with the Advanced Thermal-Hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation (ATLAS). This ISP-50 exercise has been performed in two consecutive phases: "blind" and "open" phases. Quantitative comparisons were performed using the Fast Fourier Transform Based Method (FFTBM) to compare the overall accuracy of the collected calculations. Great user effects resulting from the combination of the possible reasons were found in the blind phase, confirming that user effect is still one of the major issues in connection with the system thermal-hydraulic code application. Open calculations showed better prediction accuracy than the blind calculations in terms of average amplitude (AA) value. A total of nineteen organizations from eleven countries participated in this ISP-50 program and eight leading thermal-hydraulic system analysis codes were used: APROS, ATHLET, CATHARE, KORSAR, MARS-KS, RELAP5/MOD3.3, TECH-M-97, and TRACE.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.56 no.3
• /
• pp.1091-1099
• /
• 2024

Fluoride-salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (FHR) is a promising nuclear reactor technology. Among many challenges presented by the molten fluoride salts is the corrosion of salt-facing structural components. Higher moisture contents, in the FLiNaK (LiF-NaF-KF, 46.5-11.5-42 mol%) salt, aggravate intergranular corrosion and pitting for the given alloys. Therefore, several thermal dehydration tests of FLiNaK salt were performed with a batch size suitable for thermal-hydraulic experiments. Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) was performed for the three constituent fluoride salts individually. Preliminary thermal dehydration plans were then proposed for NaF and KF salts based on the TGA curves. However, the dehydration process may not be required for LiF since its low mass loss (<1.3 wt%). To evaluate the performance of these thermal dehydration plans, a batch-scale salt dehydration test facility was designed and constructed. The preliminary thermal dehydration plans were tested by varying the heating rates, target temperature, and holding time. The sample mass loss data showed that the high temperatures (>500 ℃) were necessary to remove a significant amount of moisture (>1 wt%) from NaF salt, while relatively low temperatures (around 300 ℃) with a long holding time (>10 h) were sufficient to remove most of the moisture from KF salt.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.101-111
• /
• 2004

The main purpose of a liquid metal reactor core thermal-hydraulic design is to efficiently extract the core thermal power by distributing the appropriate sodium coolant flow according to the power distribution in the core. The thermal-hydraulic design procedure consists of the coolant flow distribution to the sub-assemblies, the coolant/fuel temperature calculations and detailed subchannel analysis. This paper describes the LMR core thermal-hydraulic design methodology and summarizes the major design and analysis results of KALIMER breeder and breakeven cores and subassemblies. KALIMER is a 150 MWe rated (392 MWth) heterogeneous core with U-TRU-Zr ternary alloy fuel and sodium coolant.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.51 no.5
• /
• pp.1231-1240
• /
• 2019

Unlike land-based nuclear power plants, a marine or floating reactor is affected by external forces due to ocean conditions. These external forces can cause additional accelerations and affect each system and equipment of the marine reactor. Therefore, in designing a marine reactor and evaluating its performance and stability, a thermal hydraulic safety analysis code is necessary to consider the thermal hydrodynamic effects of ship motion. MARS, which is a reactor system analysis code, includes a dynamic motion model that can simulate the thermal-hydraulic phenomena under three-dimensional motion by calculating the body force term included in the momentum equation. In this study, it was verified that the dynamic motion model can simulate fluid motion with reasonable accuracy using conceptual problems. In addition, two modifications were made to the dynamic motion model; first, a user-supplied table to simulate a realistic ship motion was implemented, and second, the flow regime map determination algorithm was improved by calculating the volume inclination information at every time step if the dynamic motion model was activated. With these modifications, MARS could simulate the thermal-hydraulic phenomena under ocean motion more realistically.