A Non-Heating Experimental Study on the Two-Phase Natural Circulation through the Annular Gap between Reactor Vessel and Insulation under External Vessel Cooling

초록

To improve the margin for IVR in high-power reactors, some design improvements of the vessel/insulation configuration to increase the heat removal rate by two-phase natural circulation have been proposed. To observe and evaluate the two-phase natural circulation phenomena through the gap between the reactor vessel and the insulation in the APR1400 under external reactor vessel cooling, the T-HERMES program has been performed, that is, the T-HERMES-SCALE, T-HERMES-SMALL, HERMES-HALF, and T-HERMES-CFD studies. In this paper, the HERMES-HALF study, which is one of the T-HERMES programs, is introduced. The HERMES-HALF is a non-heating experimental study on the two-phase natural circulation through the annular gap between the reactor vessel and the insulation. The objectives of this HERMES-HALF study are to observe and evaluate the two-phase natural circulation phenomena through the gap between the reactor vessel and the insulation in the APR1400. For these purposes, a half-scaled experimental facility is prepared utilizing the results of a scaling analysis to simulate the APR1400 reactor and insulation system. The behaviors of the boiling-induced two-phase natural circulation flow in the insulation gap are observed, and the liquid mass flow rates driven by the natural circulation loop and void fraction distribution are measured. And numerical analyses of the HERMES-HALF experiments using CFX-5.6 code have also been performed by solving unsteady, three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations for multiphase flows with the zero equation turbulence model. By the experimental flow observation and numerical predictions, weak recirculation flows in the near region of the shear key are observed.