In the Loviisa 1 and 2 nuclear power plants the subcooling margin of the hottest subchannel of the fuel assembly is monitored. The temperature of the coolant in the hottest subchannel is limited to the constant saturation temperature. Bending of the fuel rods occurs during normal operation due to the differences in the heat profiles of the rods. The coolant temperature will rise more in the subchannel with smaller flow area due to the bending and this has to be taken into account in the safety margin of subchannel enthalpy rise. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are used to estimate how much the estimated maximum bow of a rod affects the temperature rise of the subchannel. The quantitative uncertainty of the predicted enthalpy rise in fuel bundle subchannel is estimated based on the uncertainty of modelling of mixing between subchannels. The measured turbulence quantities from LDA measurements of cold test assembly made in 1990s in Fortum are compared with CFD results to give uncertainty estimation for turbulence, which is further used for uncertainty estimation of mixing and simulated subchannel enthalpy rise.
In Loviisa NPP, there are two limiting thermal margins called the enthalpy rise margin and the linear heat rate margin that are monitored during normal operation. Engineering safety factors are applied in determination of both of these factors. The factors take into account the effect of various manufacturing tolerances, impact of the irradiation and simulation uncertainties on the local heat rate and on the enthalpy of the coolant. The engineering factors were re-evaluated during 2015 and the factors were approved by the Finnish radiation and nuclear safety authority in 2016. The re-evaluation was performed by considering all of the identified phenomena that affect the local heat rate or the enthalpy of the coolant. This paper summarizes the work that was performed during the re-evaluation of the engineering safety factors and presents the results for each uncertainty component. The new engineering safety factors are 1.115 for the linear heat rate and 1.100 for the enthalpy rise margin when the old factors were 1.12 and 1.16, respectively. The new factors improve the fuel economy by about 1%.
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