Analysis on short-term decay heat after shutdown during load-follow operation with seasonal and daily scenarios

For the future energy-mix policy for carbon neutrality, demand for the capability of load-follow operation has emerged in nuclear power plants in order to accommodate the intermittency of renewable energy. The short-term decay heat analysis is also required to evaluate the decay heat level varied by the power level change during the load-follow operation, which is a very important parameter in terms of short-term decay heat removal during a grace time. In this study, the short-term decay heat level for 10 days after the shutdown was evaluated for both seasonal and daily load-follow cases. Additionally, the nuclide-wise contribution to the accumulated decay heat for 10 days was analyzed for further understanding of the short-term decay heat behavior. The result showed that in the seasonal case, the decay heat level was mainly determined by the power level right before the shutdown and the amount of each nuclide was varied with the power variation due to the long variation interval of 90 days. Whereas, in the daily case, the decay heat level was strongly impacted by the average power level during operation and meaningful mass variations for those nuclides were not observed due to the short variation interval of 0.5 days.