• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.2A
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• pp.123-130
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• 2012

A cooling system is indispensable for the fossil and nuclear power plants which produce electricity by rotating the turbines with hot steam. A cycle of the typical cooling system includes pumping of seawater at the intake pump house, exchange of heat at the condenser, and discharge of hot water to the sea. The cooling type of the nuclear power plants in Korea recently evolves from the conventional surface intake/discharge systems to the submerged intake/discharge systems that minimize effectively an intake temperature rise of the existing plants and that are beneficial to the marine environment by reducing the high temperature region with an intensive dilution due to a high velocity jet and density differential at the mixing zone. It is highly anticipated that the future nuclear power plants in Korea will accommodate the submerged cooling system in credit of supplying the lower temperature water in the summer season. This study investigates the approach flow patterns at the velocity caps and discharge flow patterns from diffusers using the 3-D computational fluid dynamics code of $FLOW-3D^{(R)}$. The approach flow test has been conducted at the velocity caps with and without a cap. The discharge flow from the diffuser was simulated for the single-port diffuser and multi-ports diffuser. The flow characteristics to the velocity cap with a cap demonstrate that fish entrainment can significantly be minimized on account of the low vertical flow component around the cap. The flow pattern around the diffuser is well agreed with the schematic diagram by Jirka and Harleman.