Use of DRACS to Enhance HTGRs Passive Safety and Economy
This paper discusses the use of DRACS to Enhance HTGRs Passive Safety and Economy. One of the important requirements for Gen. IV High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactors (HTGR) is passive safety. Currently all the HTGR designs use Reactor Vessel Auxiliary Cooling System (RVACS) for passive decay heat removal. [1] The decay heat first is transferred to core barrel by conduction and radiation, and then to reactor vessel by thermal radiation and convection; finally the decay heat is transferred to natural circulated air or water systems. RVACS can be characterized as a surface based decay heat removal system. Similar concepts have been widely used in sodium cooled fast reactor (SFR) designs, advanced light water reactors like AP1000. The RVACS is especially suitable for smaller power reactors since small systems have relatively larger surface area. RVACS tends to be less expensive. However, it limits the largest achievable power level for modular HTGRs due to the mismatch between the reactor power (proportional to volume) and decay heat removal capability (proportional to surface). When the relative decay heat removal capability is reduced, the peak fuel temperature increases, even close to the design limit. Annual designs with internal reflector can mitigate this effect therefore further increase the power. Another way to increase power is to increase power density. However, it is also limited by the decay heat removal capability. Besides safety, HTGRs also need to be economical in order to compete with other reactor designs. The limit of decay heat removal capability set by using RVACS has affected the economy of HTGRs. Forsberg [2] pointed out other disadvantages of using RVACS such as conflicting functional requirements for the reactor vessel and scaling distortion for integral effect test of the system performance. A potential alternative solution is to use a volume based passive decay removal system, call Direct Reactor Auxiliary Cooling Systems (DRACS), to remove or mitigate the limitation on decay heat removal capability. DRACS has been widely used in SFR designs and in liquid salt cooled high temperature reactors. The containment cooling system in BWR is another example of volume based decay removal systems. DRACS composes of natural circulation loops with two sets of heat exchangers, one in reactor side and another is in environment side. DRACS has the benefits of increasing the power as needed (scalability) and modularity. This paper introduces the concept of using DRACS to enhance HTGRs passive safety and economy.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - NE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1027897
- Report Number(s):
- INL/CON-11-20766; TRN: US1105295
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ANS 2011 Annual Meeting,Hollywood, FL,06/26/2011,06/30/2011
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
AFTER-HEAT REMOVAL
CONTAINMENT
CONVECTION
COOLING SYSTEMS
DECAY
DRILLING EQUIPMENT
FAST REACTORS
FUNCTIONALS
GAS COOLED REACTORS
HEAT EXCHANGERS
NATURAL CONVECTION
POWER DENSITY
POWER REACTORS
REACTOR VESSELS
REMOVAL
SAFETY
SODIUM
SURFACE AREA
THERMAL RADIATION
DRACS