Analysis of ESFR Decay Heat Removal Systems in Protected Station Blackout

Author(s):  
Janos Bodi ◽  
Alexander Ponomarev ◽  
Evaldas Bubelis ◽  
Konstantin Mikityuk

Abstract As part of the ESFR-SMART project, safety assessments are being conducted on the updated European Sodium Fast Reactor (ESFR) design. An important part of the study is the evaluation of the reactor's behavior within hypothetical accidental conditions to assess and ensure that the accident would not lead to unexpected and disastrous events. In the current paper, the analyzed accidental scenario is the so called Protected Station Blackout (PSBO), where the offsite power is lost for the power plant, simulated by using the TRACE and SIM-SFR system codes. The assessment started from the simulation of the reactor behavior without the decay heat removal systems (DHRS). Following this, calculations of multiple DHRS arrangements have been performed to evaluate the individual and combined efficiency of the systems. Where it was possible, the results from the two system codes have been compared to show the consistency of the separate calculations. Through this study, the design of the DHRSs proposed at the beginning of the project have been investigated, and certain recommendations have been made for further improvement of the DHRS systems performance.

2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avinash J. Gaikwad ◽  
P. K. Vijayan ◽  
Sharad Bhartya ◽  
Kannan Iyer ◽  
Rajesh Kumar ◽  
...  

Provision of passive means to reactor core decay heat removal enhances the nuclear power plant (NPP) safety and availability. In the earlier Indian pressurised heavy water reactors (IPHWRs), like the 220 MWe and the 540 MWe, crash cooldown from the steam generators (SGs) is resorted to mitigate consequences of station blackout (SBO). In the 700 MWe PHWR currently being designed an additional passive decay heat removal (PDHR) system is also incorporated to condense the steam generated in the boilers during a SBO. The sustainability of natural circulation in the various heat transport systems (i.e., primary heat transport (PHT), SGs, and PDHRs) under station blackout depends on the corresponding system's coolant inventories and the coolant circuit configurations (i.e., parallel paths and interconnections). On the primary side, the interconnection between the two primary loops plays an important role to sustain the natural circulation heat removal. On the secondary side, the steam lines interconnections and the initial inventory in the SGs prior to cooldown, that is, hooking up of the PDHRs are very important. This paper attempts to open up discussions on the concept and the core issues associated with passive systems which can provide continued heat sink during such accident scenarios. The discussions would include the criteria for design, and performance of such concepts already implemented and proposes schemes to be implemented in the proposed 700 MWe IPHWR. The designer feedbacks generated, and critical examination of performance analysis results for the added passive system to the existing generation II & III reactors will help ascertaining that these safety systems/inventories in fact perform in sustaining decay heat removal and augmenting safety.


Author(s):  
Joel Guidez ◽  
Janos Bodi ◽  
Konstantin Mikityuk ◽  
Enrico Girardi ◽  
Jeremy Bittan ◽  
...  

Abstract The European project ESFR SMART offers innovative options of a sodium fast reactor to improve its safety. This paper explains the results of preliminary calculations made of the main options to verify the big lines of their feasibility. Design propositions and calculations are here provided of following innovative options: removal of the safety vessel, innovative decay heat removal systems, core catcher, thermal pumps and secondary loops. In conclusion, all these options seem able to fulfil the big lines of new safety rules for GEN-IV reactors. A status of the R&D necessary to validate these new options is also proposed.


Author(s):  
Lap Y. Cheng ◽  
Hans Ludewig ◽  
Jae Jo

A series of transient analyses using the system code RELAP5-3d has been performed to confirm the efficacy of a proposed hybrid active/passive combination approach to the decay heat removal for an advanced 2400MWt GEN-IV gas-cooled fast reactor. The accident sequence of interest is a station blackout simultaneous with a small break (10 sq.inch/0.645m2) in the reactor vessel. The analyses cover the three phases of decay heat removal in a depressurization accident: (1) forced flow cooling by the power conversion unit (PCU) coast down, (2) active forced flow cooling by a battery powered blower, and (3) passive cooling by natural circulation. The blower is part of an emergency cooling system (ECS) that by design is to sustain passive decay heat removal via natural circulation cooling 24 hours after shutdown. The RELAP5 model includes the helium-cooled reactor, the ECS (primary and secondary side), the PCU with all the rotating machinery (turbine and compressors) and the heat transfer components (recuperator, pre-cooler and inter-cooler), and the guard containment that surrounds the reactor and the PCU. The transient analysis has demonstrated the effectiveness of passive decay heat removal by natural circulation cooling when the guard containment pressure is maintained at or above 800kPa.


Author(s):  
Nina Yue ◽  
Rong Cai ◽  
Yun Wang ◽  
Suizheng Qiu ◽  
Dalin Zhang

A sodium-cooled fast reactor is a significant candidate for future power reactor systems. Decay heat removal is an essential function of reactor safety systems The decay heat removal system should have the capacity to remove the decay heat with natural circulation in any accident. There are three types of decay heat removal systems, namely direct reactor auxiliary cooling system, primary reactor auxiliary cooling system, and intermediate reactor auxiliary cooling system. The one dimensional systems analysis code THACS was applied to conduct transient analyses of a sodium-cooled fast reactor, and the capabilities of three types of decay heat removal systems against a station blackout accident were compared. The results indicate that these three types of decay heat removal systems can remove the residual heat effectively. For large-scale sodium-cooled fast reactor, the capabilities of primary reactor auxiliary cooling system and intermediate reactor auxiliary cooling system were better, because the cold sodium from the penetrating heat exchanger in these two auxiliary cooling systems could directly flow into the core assemblies.


Author(s):  
Antonio Jiménez-Carrascosa ◽  
Nuria Garcia Herranz ◽  
Jiri Krepel ◽  
Marat Margulis ◽  
Una Baker ◽  
...  

Abstract In this work a detailed assessment of the decay heat power for the commercial-size European Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (ESFR) at the end of its equilibrium cycle has been performed. The summation method has been used to compute very accurate spatial- and time-dependent decay heat by employing state-of-the-art coupled transport-depletion computational codes and nuclear data. This detailed map provides basic information for subsequent transient calculations of the ESFR. A comprehensive analysis of the decay heat has been carried out and interdependencies among decay heat and different parameters characterizing the core state prior to shutdown, such as discharge burnup or type of fuel material, have been identified. That analysis has served as a basis to develop analytic functions to reconstruct the spatial-dependent decay heat power for the ESFR for cooling times within the first day after shutdown.


Author(s):  
Seong Kuk Cho ◽  
Jekyoung Lee ◽  
Jeong Ik Lee ◽  
Jae Eun Cha

A Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) has receiving attention as one of the promising next generation nuclear reactors because it can recycle the spent nuclear fuel produced from the current commercial nuclear reactors and accomplish higher thermal efficiency than the current commercial nuclear reactors. However, after shutdown of the nuclear reactor core, the accumulated fission products of the SFR also decay and release heat via radiation within the reactor. To remove this residual heat, a decay heat removal system (DHRS) with supercritical CO2 (S-CO2) as the working fluid is suggested with a turbocharger system which achieves passive operational capability. However, for designing this system an improved S-CO2 turbine design methodology should be suggested because the existing methodology for designing the S-CO2 Brayton cycle has focused only on the compressor design near the critical point. To develop a S-CO2 turbine design methodology, the non-dimensional number based design and the 1D mean line design method were modified and suggested. The design methodology was implemented into the developed code and the code results were compared with existing turbine experimental data. The data were collected under air and S-CO2 environment. The developed code in this research showed a reasonable agreement with the experimental data. Finally using the design code, the turbocharger design for the suggested DHRS and prediction of the off design performance were carried out. As further works, more effort will be put it to expand the S-CO2 turbine test data for validating the design code and methodology.


Author(s):  
Joel Guidez ◽  
Janos Bodi ◽  
Konstantin Mikityuk ◽  
Enrico Girardi ◽  
Bernard Carluec

Abstract Following up the previous CP-ESFR project, the ESFR-SMART project considers the safety objectives envisaged for Generation-IV reactors, taking into account the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident, in order to increase the safety level of the European Sodium Fast Reactor (ESFR). In accordance with these objectives, guidelines have been defined to drive the ESFR-SMART developments, mainly simplifying the design and using all the positive features of Sodium Fast Reactors (SFR), such as low coolant pressure, efficiency of natural convection, possibility of decay heat removal (DHR) by atmospheric air, high thermal inertia and long grace period before a human intervention is needed. In this paper, a set of new ambitious safety measures is introduced for further evaluation within the project. The proposed set aims at consistency with the main lines of safety evolutions since the Fukushima accident, but it does not yet constitute the final comprehensive safety analysis. The paper gives a first review of the new propositions to enhance the ESFR safety, leading to a simplified reactor, forgiving and including a lot of passivity. This first version is supported by the various project tasks in order to assess the relevance of the whole design in comparison to the final safety objectives.


Author(s):  
Hae-Yong Jeong ◽  
Kwi-Seok Ha ◽  
Won-Pyo Chang ◽  
Yong-Bum Lee ◽  
Dohee Hahn ◽  
...  

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) is developing a Generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor design equipped with a passive decay heat removal circuit (PDRC), which is a unique safety system in the design. The performance of the PDRC system is quite important for the safety in a simple system transient and also in an accident condition. In those situations, the heat generated in the core is transported to the ambient atmosphere by natural circulation of the PDRC loop. It is essential to investigate the performance of its heat removal capability through experiments for various operational conditions. Before the main experiments, KAERI is performing numerical studies for an evaluation of the performance of the PDRC system. First, the formation of a stable natural circulation is numerically simulated in a sodium test loop. Further, the performance of its heat removal at a steady state condition and at a transient condition is evaluated with the real design configuration in the KALIMER-600. The MARS-LMR code, which is developed for the system analysis of a liquid metal-cooled fast reactor, is applied to the analysis. In the present study, it is validated that the performance of natural circulation loop is enough to achieve the required passive heat removal for the PDRC. The most optimized modeling methodology is also searched for using various modeling approaches.


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