Passive containment cooling for next generation water cooled reactors

Book · Mon Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1996

OSTI ID:248171

Cheng, X ^[1]; Erbacher, F J; Neitzel, H J ^[2]

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1. Technische Univ. Karlsruhe (Germany). Inst. fuer Stroemungslehre und Stroemungsmaschinen
2. Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (Germany). Inst. fuer Angewandte Thermo- und Fluiddynamik

For next generation water cooled reactors passive safety systems should be investigated in respect to their feasibility and functional performance. The Research Center Karlsruhe and the Technical University Karlsruhe have proposed a composite containment concept which copes with severe accidents. One essential of this concept is the decay heat removal from the containment by natural air convection and thermal radiation in a passive way. To determine the coolability of such a passive cooling system and to study the physical phenomena involved, experimental separate-effects investigations are under way in the PASCO test facility which is a one-sided heated rectangular channel. In addition numerical calculations are performed by using the I-D code PASCO and the 3-D code FLUTAN. Experimental results in respect to the distribution of the fluid velocity, the fluid temperature and the wall temperature are presented. A comparison is made between the experimental data and code predictions. The deficiencies and needs for further research are being discussed. From the results achieved so far it has been found that the passive containment cooling by natural air convection coupled with thermal radiation is a very promising concept.

• OSTI ID: 248171
• Report Number(s): CONF-960306--; ISBN 0-7918-1226-X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
AFTER-HEAT REMOVAL
AIR FLOW
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
CONTAINMENT SYSTEMS
COOLING
COOLING SYSTEMS
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
NATURAL CONVECTION
REACTOR ACCIDENTS
REACTOR SAFETY EXPERIMENTS
TEST FACILITIES
THEORETICAL DATA
WATER COOLED REACTORS