Natural Circulation Patterns in the VHTR Air-Ingress Accident and Related Issues
A natural circulation pattern in a Very High Gas-Cooled Reactor during a hypothetical air-ingress accident has been investigated using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) methods in order to compare with the previous 1-D flow path model for the air-ingress analyses. The GT-MHR 600 MWt reactor was selected to be the reference design and modeled by a half symmetric 3-D geometry using FLUENT 6.3, a commercial CFD code. The simulation was carried out as steady-state calculations, and the boundary conditions were either assumed or provided from the 1-D GAMMA code results. Totally, 12 different cases have been estimated, and many notable findings and results have been obtained in this study. According to the simulations, the natural circulation pattern in the reactor was quite different from the previous 1-D assumptions. A large re-circulation flow with thermal stratification phenomena was clearly observed in the hot-leg and the lower plenum in the 3-D model. This re-circulation flow provided approximately an order faster air-ingress speed (0.46 m/s in superficial velocity) than previously predicted values by 1-D modeling (0.02~0.03 m/s). It indicates that the 1-D air-ingress modeling may significantly distort the air-ingress scenario and consequences. In addition, the complicated natural circulation pattern is eventually expected to lead to very complex graphite oxidations and corrosion patterns.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - NE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1055952
- Report Number(s):
- INL/CON-09-17404
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: NUTHOS-8,Shanghai, China,10/10/2010,10/14/2010
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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