LEAKAGE FROM CVCS PIPE OF REGENERATIVE HEAT EXCHANGER INDUCED BY HIGH-CYCLE THERMAL FATIGUE AT TSURUGA NUCLEAR POWER STATION UNIT 2

摘要

On July 12, 1999 while Tsuruga-2, PWR 4-loop plant, was operating at full power (1,160 MWe), unidentified leakage inside the primary containment vessel was detected. As the leakage was identified, the plant promptly started to proceed to cold shutdown. Visual inspection after an isolation of the CVCS (Chemical & Volume Control System) revealed that the leakage was from a connecting pipe between the middle and lower stages in the CVCS regenerative heat exchanger. The CVCS regenerative heat exchanger has three shells, i.e. the upper shell, the middle shell and the lower shell. Each heat exchanger shell has an inner cylinder containing a heat exchanger tube bundle. Reactor coolant is cooled inside the inner cylinder, however, the temperature of the coolant which flows outside the inner cylinder keeps high. These two coolant flows are mixed around the outlet of the inner cylinder. Thermal hydraulic mock-up tests simulating internal flows in the heat exchanger were conducted along with thermal and structural analyses to investigate a high-cycle thermal fatigue mechanism. As a result of the investigation, the cause of the leakage from the connecting pipe was considered to be as follows; (1) Flow out of the lower temperature bypass flow region occurred repeatedly at the lower part of the shell which yielded a cyclic deformation of the shell due to thermal expansion and shrinkage. (2) This cyclic deformation caused a cyclic change of the gap between the inner cylinder support ring and shell, and consequently the cyclic change of the flow pattern at the region where the bypass flow and main flow mixed. (3) Superposition of lower frequent temperature change due to the change of flow pattern and higher frequent temperature fluctuation due the mixture of the bypass flow and main flow caused high-cycle thermal fatigue cracking.