The safety evaluation of nuclear power and re search reactors is a very important step before their construction and during their operation. This evaluation based on the best estimate calculations requires qualified codes qualified users, and qualified nodalizations. The effect of code users on the RELAP5 results during the analysis of loss of flow transient in MTR research reactors is presented in this pa per. To clarify this effect, two nodalizations for research reactor different in the simulation of the open water surface boundary conditions of the reactor pool have been used. Very different results are obtained with few choices for code users. The core natural circulation flow with the be ginning of core boiling doesn't stop but in creases. The in creasing in the natural circulation flow shifts out the boiling from the core and the clad temperature decreases be low the local saturation temperature
The safety assessment of research and power reactors is a continuous process covering their lifespan and requiring verified and validated codes. Power reactor codes all over the world are well established and qualified against real measuring data and qualified experimental facilities. These codes are usually sophisticated, require special skills and consume a lot of running time. On the other hand, most research reactor codes still require much more data for validation and qualification. It is, therefore, of benefit to any regulatory body to develop its own codes for the review and assessment of research reactors. The present paper introduces a simple, one-dimensional Fortran program called THDSN for steady-state thermal-hydraulic calculations of plate-type fuel research reactors. Besides calculating the fuel and coolant temperature distributions and pressure gradients in an average and hot channel, the program calculates the safety limits and margins against the critical phenomena encountered in research reactors, such as the onset of nucleate boiling, critical heat flux and flow instability. Well known thermal-hydraulic correlations for calculating the safety parameters and several formulas for the heat transfer coefficient have been used. The THDSN program was verified by comparing its results for 2 and 10 MW benchmark reactors with those published in IAEA publications and a good agreement was found. Also, the results of the program are compared with those published for other programs, such as the PARET and TERMIC
The present work deals with the anal y sis of RELAP5 results obtained from the evaluation study of the total loss of flow transient with the deficiency of the heat removal system in a research reactor using two different nodalizations. It focuses on the effect of nodalization on the thermal-hydraulic evaluation of the re search reactor. The analysis of RELAP5 results has shown that nodalization has a big effect on the predicted scenario of the postulated transient. There fore, great care should be taken during the nodalization of the reactor, especially when the avail able experimental or measured data are insufficient for making a complete qualification of the nodalization. Our analysis also shows that the research reactor pool simulation has a great effect on the evaluation of natural circulation flow and on other thermal-hydraulic parameters during the loss of flow transient. For example, the on set time of core boiling changes from less than 2000 s to 15000 s, starting from the beginning of the transient. This occurs if the pool is simulated by two vertical volumes in stead of one vertical volume
The core cooling of upward flow MTR pool type Research Reactor (RR) at the later stage of pump coast down is experimentally handled to clarify the effect of some operating parameters on RR core cooling. Therefore, a test rig is designed and built to simulate the core cooling loop at this stage. The core is simulated as two vertical channels, electrically heated, and extended between upper and lower plenums. Two elevated tanks filled with water are connected to the two plenums. The first one constitutes a left branch, connected to the lower plenum, and is electrically heated to simulate the core return pipe. The second one constitutes the right branch, connected to the upper plenum, and is cooled by refrigerant circuit to simulate the reactor pool. Channel coolant and wall temperatures at different power and branch temperatures are measured, registered and analyzed. The results show that at this stage of core cooling two cooling loops are established; an internal circulation loop between the channels dominated by the difference in channel's power and an external circulation loop between the branches dominated by the temperature difference between branches. Also, there is a double inversion in core flow, upward-downward-upward flow. This double inversion increases largely the channel's wall temperature. Complementary safety analysis to evaluate this phenomenon must be performed.
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