• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3320-3325
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• 2023

The scaled water-cooled Reactor Cavity Cooling System (RCCS) experimental facility reproduces a passive safety feature to be implemented in Generation IV nuclear reactors. It keeps the reactor cavity and other internal structures in operational conditions by removing heat leakage from the reactor pressure vessel. The present work uses Flownex one-dimensional thermal-fluid code to model the facility and predict the experimental thermal-hydraulic behavior. Two representative steady-state cases defined by the bulk volumetric flow rate are simulated (Re = 2,409 and Re = 11,524). Results of the cavity outlet temperature, risers' temperature profile, and volumetric flow split in the cooling panel are also compared with the experimental data and RELAP system code simulations. The comparisons are in reasonable agreement with the previous studies, demonstrating the ability of Flownex to simulate the RCCS behavior. It is found that the low Re case of 2,409, temperature and flow split are evenly distributed across the risers. On the contrary, there's an asymmetry trend in both temperature and flow split distributions for the high Re case of 11,524.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.271-278
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• 2020

The investigation into a full-scale 27 m high, by 6 m wide, thermosyphon loop. The simulation model is based on a one-dimensional axially-symmetrical control volume approach, where the loop is divided into a series of discreet control volumes. The three conservation equations, namely, mass, momentum and energy, were applied to these control volumes and solved with an explicit numerical method. The flow is assumed to be quasi-static, implying that the mass-flow rate changes over time. However, at any instant in time the mass-flow rate is constant around the loop. The boussinesq approximation was invoked, and a reasonable correlation between the experimental and theoretical results was obtained. Experimental results are presented and the flow regimes of the working fluid inside the loop identified. The results indicate that a series of such thermosyphon loops can be used as a cavity cooling system and that the one-dimensional theoretical model can predict the internal temperature and mass-flow rate of the thermosyphon loop.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.45-60
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• 2006

Presently, the VHTGR (Very High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor) is considered the most attractive candidate for a GEN-IV reactor to produce hydrogen, which will be a key resource for future energy production. A new concept for a reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS), a critical safety feature in the VHTGR, is proposed in the present study. The proposed RCCS consists of passive water pool and active air cooling systems. These are employed to overcome the poor cooling capability of the air-cooled RCCS and the complex cavity structures of the water-cooled RCCS. In order to estimate the licensibility of the proposed design, its performance and integrity were tested experimentally with a reduced-scale mock-up facility, as well as with a separate-effect test facility (SET) for the 1/4 water pool of the RCCS-SNU to examine the heat transfer and pressure drop and code capability. This paper presents the test results for SET and validation of MARS-GCR, a system code for the safety analysis of a HTGR. In addition, CFX5.7, a computational fluid dynamics code, was also used for the code-to-code benchmark of MARS-GCR. From the present experimental and numerical studies, the efficacy of MARS-GCR in application to determining the optimal design of complicated systems such as a RCCS and evaluation of their feasibility has been validated.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.1310-1319
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• 2024

The reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS) is a passive reactor safety system commonly present in the designs of High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGR) that removes heat from the reactor pressure vessel by means of natural convection and radiation. It is one of the factors responsible for ensuring that the reactor does not melt down under any plausible accident scenario. For the simulation of accident scenarios, which are transient phenomena unfolding over a span of up to several days, intermediate fidelity methods and system codes must be employed to limit the models' execution time. These models can quantify radiation heat transfer well, but heat transfer caused by natural convection must be quantified with the use of correlations for the heat transfer coefficient. It is difficult to obtain reliable correlations for HTGR RCCS heat transfer coefficients experimentally due to such a system's size. They could, however, be obtained from high-fidelity steady-state simulations of RCCSs. The Rayleigh number in RCCSs is too high for using a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) technique; thus, a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach must be employed. There are many RANS models, each performing best under different geometry and fluid flow conditions. To find the most suitable one for simulating an RCCS, the RANS models need to be validated. This work benchmarks various RANS models against three experiments performed on the HTTR RCCS Mockup by the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in 1993. This facility is a 1/6 scale model of a vessel cooling system (VCS) for the High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR), which is operated by JAEA. Multiple RANS models were evaluated on a simplified 2d-axisymmetric geometry. They were found to reproduce the experimental temperature profiles with errors of up to 22% for the lowest temperature benchmark and 15% for the higher temperature benchmarks. The results highlight that the pragmatic turbulence models need to be validated for high Rayleigh natural convection-driven flows and improved accordingly, more publicly available experimental data of RCCS resembling experiments is needed and indicate that a 2d-axisymmetric geometry approximation is likely insufficient to capture all the relevant phenomena in RCCS simulations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.534-545
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• 2015

In the very high temperature reactor (VHTR), which is a next generation nuclear reactor system, ceramics are used as a fuel coating material and graphite is used as a core structural material. Even if a depressurization accident occurs and the reactor power goes up instantly, the temperature of the core will change only slowly. This is because the thermal capacity of the core is so high. Therefore, the VHTR system can passively remove the decay heat of the core by natural convection and radiation from the surface of the reactor pressure vessel. The objectives of this study are to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of natural convection of a one-side heated vertical channel with inserted porous materials of high porosity and also to develop the passive cooling system for the VHTR. An experiment was carried out using a one-side heated vertical rectangular channel. To obtain the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics of the vertical channel with inserted porous material, we have also carried out a numerical analysis using a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code. This paper describes the thermal performances of the one-side heated vertical rectangular channel with an inserted copper wire of high porosity.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.451-461
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• 2022

CFD analysis including optimization process was conducted to design shell and tube CO₂ methanation reactor cooling system. The high-pressure saturated water flowed into the cooling system and was evaporated by heat flux from reacting tubes. The optimization process decided the gap between tubes and reactor diameter to satisfy objective functions related to temperature. The results showed that the gap and diameter reduced about 30% and 3.6% respectively. Averaged surface temperature satisfied the target value and the min-max deviation was minimized.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.156-164
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• 1986

In the case of boiling on high temperature wall, vapor film covers fully or parcially the surface. This phenomenon, film boiling or transition boiling, is very important in the surface heat treatment of metal, design of cryogenic heat exchanger and emergency cooling of nuclear reactor. Mainly supposed hydraulic-thermal accidents in nuclear reactor are LCCA (Loss of Coolant Accident) and PCM (Power-Cooling Mismatch). Recently, world-wide studies on reflooding of high temperature rod bundles after the occurrence of the above accidents focus attention on wall temperature history and required time in transient cooling process, wall superheat at rewet point, heat flux-wall superheat relationship beyond the transition boiling region, and two-phase flow state near the surface. It is considered that the further systematical study in this field will be in need in spite of the previous results in ref. (2), (3), (4). The paper is the study about the fast transient cooling process following the wall temperature excursion under the CHF (Critical Heat Flux) condition in a forced convective subcooled boiling system. The test section is a vertically arranged concentric annulus of 800 mm long and 10 mm hydraulic diameter. The inner tube, SUS 304 of 400 mm long, 8 mm I.D, and 7 mm O.D., is heated uniformly by the low voltage AC power. The wall temperature measurements were performed at the axial distance from the inlet of the heating tube, z=390 mm. 6 chromel- alumel thermocouples of 76 .mu.m were press fitted to the inner surface of the heating tube periphery. To investigate the heat transfer characteristics during the fast transient cooling process, the outer surface (fluid side) temperature and the surface heat flux are computed from the measured inner surface temperature history by means of a numerical method for inverse problems of transient heat conduction. Present cooling (boiling) curve is sufficiently compared with the previous results.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.31-41
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• 2018

This paper discusses a structure design and thermal analysis of cryogenic conduction cooling system for a high current HTS DC reactor. Dimensions of the conduction cooling system parts including HTS magnets, bobbin structures, current leads, support bars, and thermal exchangers were calculated and drawn using a 3D CAD program. A finite element method model was built for determining the optimal design parameters and analyzing the thermo-mechanical characteristics. The operating current and inductance of the reactor magnet were 1,500 A, 400 mH, respectively. The thermal load of the HTS DC reactor was analyzed for determining the cooling capacity of the cryo-cooler. Hence, we carried out the operating test of conduction cooling system of the 1st stage area with high current flow. The cooper bars was cooled down to 40 K and HTS leads operated stably. As a experiment result, the total heat load of the 1st stage area is 190 W. The study results can be effectively utilized for the design and fabrication of a commercial HTS DC reactor.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.21-27
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• 2008

The reactor head of a sodium-cooled fast reactor KALIMER-600 should be cooled during the reactor operation in order to maintain the integrity of sealing material and to prevent a creep fatigue. Analyzing turbulent natural convection flow in the cover gas region of reactor vessel with the commercial CFD code CFX10.0, the cooling requirement for the reactor head and the performance of the insulation plate were assessed. The results showed that the high temperature region around reactor vessel was caused by the convective heat transfer of Helium gas flow ascending the gap between the insulation plate and the reactor vessel inner wall. The insulation plate was shown to sufficiently block the radiative heat transfer from pool surface to reactor head to a satisfactory degree. More than $32.5m^3$/sec of cooling air flow rate was predicted to maintain the required temperature of reactor head.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.820-829
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• 2004

The In-Containment Refueling Water Storage Tank (IRWST), one of the design improvements applied to the APR -1400, has a function to condense the high enthalpy fluid discharged from the Reactor Coolant System (RCS). The condensation of discharged fluid by the tank water drives the tank temperature high and causes oscillatory condensation. Also if the tank cooling water temperature approaches the saturated state, the steam bubble may escape from the water uncondensed. These oscillatory condensation and bubble escape would burden the undue load to the tank structure, pressurize the tank, and degrade its intended function. For these reasons simple analytical modeling and experimental works were performed in order to predict exact tank temperature distribution and to find the effective cooling method to keep the tank temperature below the bubble escape limit (93.3$^{\circ}C$), which was experimentally proven by other researchers. Both the analytical model and experimental results show that the temperature distributions are horizontally stratified. Particularly, the hot liquid produced by the condensation around the sparger holes goes up straight like a thermal plume. Also, the momentum of the discharged fluid is not so strong to interrupt this horizontal thermal stratification significantly. Therefore the layout and shape of sparger is not so important as long as the location of the sparger hole is sufficiently close to the bottom of the tank. Finally, for the effective tank cooling it is recommended that the locations of the discharge and intake lines of the cooling system be cautiously selected considering the temperature distribution, the water level change, and the cooling effectiveness.