Concept of prismatic high temperature gas-cooled reactor with SiC coating on graphite structures

Abstract

A 100-MW th prismatic high temperature gas-cooled reactor was designed to be a long-life small reactor. To acquire a passive safety feature, the reactor was mainly improved with regard to graphite oxidation resistance. The concept of applying a silicon carbide coating layer on the surface of the graphite structures in the core was proposed to overcome any serious problem from graphite oxidation during unforeseen situations. However, there was concern that the deviation of neutronic and thermal properties of silicon carbide from graphite could affect the reactor operation and the heat transfer characteristics. Therefore, in this study we investigated the effects of applying a silicon carbide coating layer over the graphite structures from the neutronic and thermal-hydraulic points of view. Silicon carbide coating can lower the effective multiplication factor and shorten the reactor operating cycle, but not significantly. From the viewpoint of thermal-hydraulic operation, silicon carbide has lower thermal conductivity than that of graphite, so the layer of silicon carbide could act as a wall to keep the heat from moving across the layer. Under normal operation, the layer of silicon carbide coating had a less significant impact on the maximum fuel temperature, and the temperature remained lower than

Burnup instabilities in the full-core HTR model simulation

“…Moreover, model of the system comprised only 3 burnable zones and no word about power profile or stability was given. More recent paper of (Trinuruk and Obara, 2014) presents MC burnup simulations with MVP code for 100MW th prismatic HTR (not annular). The work presents radial power density distribution for 5 selected time steps and temporal evolution of peaking factor, but no information is given on the issues such as step length, step model, burnup stability or axial power profile.…”

Dense SiC Coatings as Barrier Layer on Graphite Heat Elements in Furnaces for Smelting Silicon in Photovoltaic Industry

“…have reported the fracture behavior of CVD SiC‐coated graphite; Kingetsu et al . and Trinuruk studied the correlation between the oxidation behavior and the microstructure of SiC coatings deposited on graphite substrates. Yang and Jafari have investigated the performance of oxidation and ablation of SiC coating on graphite.…”