AHTR Mechanical, Structural, and Neutronic Preconceptual Design

Varma, Venugopal Koikal; Holcomb, David Eugene; Peretz, F.J.; Bradley, Eric; Ilas, Dan; Qualls, A. L.; Zaharia, Nathaniel M

doi:10.2172/1054145

Cited by 28 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(27 reference statements)

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“…A three-dimensional assembly model from the AHTR design studies [11] was used to determine eigenvalue sensitivity coefficients. The model is a very detailed three-dimensional assembly with radially reflected boundary conditions but with axial leakage.…”

Section: Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analysis Of A Typical Fluoride Smentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Status Report on Scoping Reactor Physics and Sensitivity/Uncertainty Analysis of LR-0 Reactor Molten Salt Experiments

Brown¹,

Mueller²,

Patton³

et al. 2016

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Section: Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analysis Of A Typical Fluoride Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, application models were adapted for S/U analysis of FHR and MSR concepts. These models are representative of the Advanced High Temperature Reactor (AHTR) [11] and Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (MSBR) [12] designs. The application models were used to perform initial scoping S/U analyses for FHR and MSR concepts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Status Report on Scoping Reactor Physics and Sensitivity/Uncertainty Analysis of LR-0 Reactor Molten Salt Experiments

Brown¹,

Mueller²,

Patton³

et al. 2016

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“…These include the Pebble-Bed Fluoride salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (PB-FHR) developed by the University of California, Berkeley, of which there are a number of designs such as the "Mark 1" PB-FHR operating at 236 MWth (Andreades, et al). Other designs include the AHTR at 3400 MWth (Varma, et al, 2012) and the Small Modular AHTR (SmAHTR) at 125 MWth (Greene, 2010) developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) (UCB, 2013). Typically, the DRACS is utilized as the reactor's safety-grade decay heat removal system.…”

Section: Application Of Directionally Enhanced Dhx To Fluoride Salt-cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental investigation of a directionally enhanced DHX concept for high temperature Direct Reactor Auxiliary Cooling Systems

Hughes

Blandford

2016

Nuclear Engineering and Design

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The use of Direct Reactor Auxiliary Cooling Systems (DRACS) as a safety-related decay heat removal system for advanced reactors has developed historically through the Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) community. Beginning with the EBR-II, DRACS have been utilized in a large number of past and current SFR designs. More recently, the DRACS has been adopted for Fluoride salt-cooled High-temperature Reactors (FHRs) for similar decay heat removal functions. In this paper we introduce a novel directionally enhanced DRACS heat exchanger (DHX) concept. We present design options for optimizing such a heat exchanger so that shellside heat transfer is enhanced in one primary coolant flow direction and degraded in the opposite coolant flow direction. A reduced-scale experiment investigating the hydrodynamics of a directionally enhanced DHX was built and the data collected is presented. The concept of thermal diodicity is expanded to heat exchanger technologies and used as performance criteria for evaluating design options. A heat exchanger that can perform as such would be advantageous for use in advanced reactor concepts where primary coolant flow reversal is expected during Loss-Of-Forced-Circulation (LOFC) accidents where the ability to circulate coolant is compromised. The design could also find potential use in certain advanced Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) designs utilizing fluidic diode concepts.

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“…These passive systems are commonly considered to be more reliable than active systems because they rely on natural phenomena, such as natural circulation, that do not require external inputs (especially energy inputs). In many reactor designs, natural circulations are designed as the main mechanism to remove decay heat from reactors during postulated accidental scenarios, for example the direct reactor auxiliary cooling system (DRACS) used in salt-cooled high-temperature reactor designs (Varma et al, 2012;Hughes et al, 2016). In some innovative designs, natural circulations are also used to as the main core heat removal mechanism during normal operations, for example the NuScale design (Reyes, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical study on the Welander oscillatory natural circulation problem using high-order numerical methods

Zou

Zhao

Kim

2017

Progress in Nuclear Energy

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In this paper, high-order numerical methods are investigated in a system analysis-like code. The classical Welander oscillatory natural circulation problem, which resembles a simplified example for many types of natural circulation loops widely seen in nuclear reactor systems, was chosen to illustrate the applicability of such methods in system analysis codes, and to demonstrate the advantages of such methods over the low-order methods widely used in existing system analysis codes. As originally studied by Welander, the fluid motion in a differentially heated fluid loop can exhibit stable, weakly unstable, and strongly unstable modes. A theoretical stability map has also been originally derived from the stability analysis. Numerical results obtained in this paper show very good agreement with Welander's theoretical derivations. For stable cases, numerical results from both the high-order and low-order numerical methods agree well with the nondimensional flow rate that were analytically derived. The high-order numerical methods give much less numerical errors compared to those using low-order numerical methods. For stability analysis, the high-order numerical methods perfectly predicted the stability map, while the loworder numerical methods failed to do so. For all theoretically unstable cases, the low-order methods predicted them to be stable. The result obtained in this paper is a strong evidence for the benefits of using high-order numerical methods over the low-order ones, when they are applied to simulate natural circulation phenomenon that has already gained increasing interests in many existing and advanced nuclear reactor designs.

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AHTR Mechanical, Structural, and Neutronic Preconceptual Design

Cited by 28 publications

References 19 publications

Status Report on Scoping Reactor Physics and Sensitivity/Uncertainty Analysis of LR-0 Reactor Molten Salt Experiments

Status Report on Scoping Reactor Physics and Sensitivity/Uncertainty Analysis of LR-0 Reactor Molten Salt Experiments

Experimental investigation of a directionally enhanced DHX concept for high temperature Direct Reactor Auxiliary Cooling Systems

Numerical study on the Welander oscillatory natural circulation problem using high-order numerical methods

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