• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.239-247
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• 2008

Hydrogen production facility using very high temperature gas cooled reactor lies in situation of high temperature and corrosion which makes hydrogen release easily. In that case of hydrogen release, there lies a danger of explosion. However, from the point of thermal-hydraulics view, the long distance of them makes lower efficiency result. In this study, therefore, outlines of hydrogen production using nuclear energy are researched. Several methods for analyzing the effects of hydrogen explosion upon high temperature gas cooled reactor are reviewed. Reliability physics model which is appropriate for assessment is used. Using this model, leakage probability, rupture probability and structure failure probability of very high temperature gas cooled reactor are evaluated and classified by detonation volume and distance. Also based on standard safety criteria which is value of $1{\times}10^{-6}$, safety distance between the very high temperature gas cooled reactor and the hydrogen production facility is calculated.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.7
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• pp.591-618
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• 2006

An integrated R&D program is being conducted to study, qualify, and in some cases, develop materials with required properties for the reactor systems being developed as part the U.S. Department of Energy's Generation IV Reactor Program. The goal of the program is to ensure that the materials research and development (R&D) needed to support Gen IV applications will comprise a comprehensive and integrated effort to identify and provide the materials data and its interpretation needed for the design and construction of the selected advanced reactor concepts. The major materials issues for the five primary systems that have been considered within the U.S. Gen IV Reactor Program-very high temperature gas-cooled, supercritical water-cooled, gas-cooled fast spectrum, lead-cooled fast spectrum, and sodium-cooled fast spectrum reactors-are described along with the R&D that has been identified to address them.

• 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.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.36-41
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• 2008

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.717-724
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• 2008

Very High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (VHTR) has been selected as a high energy heat source for nuclear hydrogen generation, which can produce hydrogen from water or natural gas. A primary hot gas duct (HGD) as a coaxial double-tube type cross vessel is a key component connecting the reactor pressure vessel and the intermediate heat exchanger for the VHTR. In this study, structural sizing methodology for the primary HGD with a coaxial double-tube of the VHTR that produces heat at temperatures in the order of $950^{\circ}C$ was suggested and a structural pre-sizing of it was carried out as an example.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.52-56
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• 2011

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a candidate material for heat exchangers for VHTR (Very High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor) due to its refractory nature and high thermal conductivity. This research has focused on demonstration of physical properties and mock-up fabrication for the future heat exchange applications. It was found that the SiC-based components can be applied for process heat exchanger (PHE) and intermediate heat exchanger (IHX), which are operated at $400{\sim}1000^{\circ}C$, based on our examination for the following aspects: optimum fabrication technologies (design, machining and bonding) for compact design, thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance in sulfuric acid environment at high temperature, and simulation results on heat transferring and thermal stress distribution of heat exchanger mock-up.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.15-23
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• 2018

A compact heat exchanger is one of critical components in a very high temperature gas-cooled reactor (VHTR). Alloy 617 (Ni-Cr-Co-Mo) is considered as one of leading candidates for this application due to its excellent thermal stability and strengths in anticipated operating conditions. On the basis of current ASME code requirements, sixty sheets of this alloy are prepared for diffusion welding, which is the key technology to have a reliable compact heat exchanger. Optical microscopic analysis show that there are no cracks, incomplete bond, and porosity at/near the interface of diffusion weldment, but Cr-rich carbides and Al-rich oxides are identified through high resolution electron microscopic analysis. In high-temperature tensile testing, superior yield strengths of the diffusion weldment compared to the code requirement are obtained up to 1223 K ($950^{\circ}C$). However, both tensile strength and ductility drop rapidly at higher temperature due to the insufficient grain boundary migration across the interface of diffusion weldment. Best fit curves for minimum yield strength and average tensile strength are drawn from the experimental tensile results of this study.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.307-318
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• 2009

KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) has developed the GAMMA+ code for a thermo-fluid and safety analysis of a VHTR (Very High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor). A key safety issue of the VHTR design is to demonstrate its inherent safety features for an automatic reactor power trip and power stabilization during an anticipated transient without scram (ATWS) accident such as a loss of forced cooling by a trip of the helium circulator (LOFC) or a reactivity insertion by a control rod withdrawal (CRW). This paper intends to show the ATWS assessment capability of the GAMMA+ code which can simulate the reactor power response by solving the point-kinetic equations with six-group delayed neutrons, by considering the reactivity changes due to the effects of a core temperature variation, xenon transients, and reactivity insertions. The present benchmark calculations are performed by using the safety demonstration experiments of the 10 MW high temperature gas cooled-test module (HTR-10) in China. The calculation results of the power response transients and the solid core temperature behavior are compared with the experimental data of a LOFC ATWS test and two CRW ATWS tests by using a 1mk-control rod and a 5mk-control rod, respectively. The GAMMA+ code predicts the power response transients very well for the LOFC and CRW ATWS tests in HTR-10.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.132-141
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• 2013

This work is concerning a methodology of Ni-base superalloy development for a very high temperature gas-cooled reactor(VHTR) using design of experiments(DOE) and thermodynamic calculations. Total 32 sets of the Ni-base superalloys with various chemical compositions were formulated based on a fractional factorial design of DOE, and the thermodynamic stability of topologically close-packed(TCP) phases of those alloys was calculated by using the THERMO-CALC software. From the statistical evaluation of the effect of the chemical composition on the formation of TCP phase up to a temperature of 950 oC, which should be suppressed for prolonged service life when it used as the structural components of VHTR, 16 sets were selected for further calculation of the mechanical properties. Considering the yield and ultimate tensile strengths of the selected alloys estimated by using the JMATPRO software, the optimized chemical composition of the alloys for VHTR application, especially intermediate heat exchanger, was proposed for a succeeding experimental study.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.443-444
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• 2005