CFD Analyses of Natural Circulation in the Air-Cooled Reactor Cavity Cooling System

摘要

The Natural Convection Shutdown Heat Removal Test Facility (NSTF) is currently being built at Argonne National Laboratory, to evaluate the feasibility of the passive Reactor Cavity Cooling System (RCCS) for Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP). CFD simulations have been applied to evaluate the NSTF and NGNP RCCS designs. However, previous simulations found that convergence was very difficult to achieve in simulating the complex natural circulation. To resolve the convergence issue and increase the confidence of the CFD simulation results, additional CFD simulations were conducted using a more detailed mesh and a different solution scheme. It is found that, with the use of coupled flow and coupled energy models, the convergence can be greatly improved. Furthermore, the effects of convection in the cavity and the effects of the uncertainty in solid surface emissivity are also investigated.