Enhancing VHTR Passive Safety and Economy with Thermal Radiation Based Direct Reactor Auxiliary Cooling System

摘要

One of the most important requirements for Gen. IV Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) is passive safety. Currently all the gas cooled version of VHTR designs use Reactor Vessel Auxiliary Cooling System (RVACS) for passive decay heat removal. The RVACS can be characterized as a surface-based decay heat removal system. It is especially suitable for smaller power reactors since small systems have relatively larger surface area to volume ratio. However, RVACS limits the maximum achievable power level for modular VHTRs due to the mismatch between the reactor power (proportional to the core volume) and decay heat removal capability (proportional to the vessel surface area). Besides the safety considerations, VHTRs also need to be economical in order to compete with other reactor concepts and other types of energy sources. The limit of decay heat removal capability set by using RVACS has affected the economy of VHTRs. A potential alternative solution is to use a volume-based passive decay heat removal system, called Direct Reactor Auxiliary Cooling Systems (DRACS), to remove or mitigate the limitation on decay heat removal capability. DRACS composes of natural circulation loops with two sets of heat exchangers, one on the reactor side and another on the environmental side. For the reactor side, cooling pipes will be inserted into holes made in the outer or inner graphite reflector blocks. There will be gaps or annular regions formed between these cooling pipes and their corresponding surrounding graphite surfaces. Graphite has an excellent heat conduction property. By taking advantage of this feature, we can have a volume-based method to remove decay heat. The scalability can be achieved, if needed, by employing more rows of cooling pipes to accommodate higher decay heat rates. Since heat can easily conduct through the graphite regions among the holes made for the cooling pipes, those cooling pipes located further away from the active core region can still be very effective in removing decay heat. By removing the limit on the decay heat removal capability due to the limited available surface area as in a RVACS, the reactor power density and therefore the reactor power can be significantly increased, without losing the passive heat removal feature. This paper introduces the concept of using DRACS to enhance VHTR passive safety and economics. Three design options with different cooling pipe locations are discussed. Analysis results from a lumped volume based model and CFD simulations are presented.