Yoshiaki Oka

Plutonium breeding of light water cooled fast reactors

Light water cooled fast reactor with new fuel assemblies (FA) has been studied for high breeding of fissile plutonium. It achieves fissile plutonium surviving ratio (FPSR) of 1.342 (discharge/loading), 1.013 end and beginning of equilibrium cycle (EOEC/BOEC), and compound system doubling time (CSDT) of 95.9 years at the average coolant density of pressurized water reactor (PWR). It is further improved for reduced moderation boiling water reactor (BWR) (RMWR) coolant density. Fissile plutonium surviving ratio reaches 1.397 (discharge/loading), 1.030 (EOEC/BOEC) and CSDT is 37 years. The present study has shown the possibility of breeding at the PWR coolant density and meeting the growth rate of energy demand of advanced countries at the RMWR and Super FR coolant density for the first time. The new FA consist of closely packed fuel rods. The integrity of welding of fuel rods at the top and bottom ends is maintained as the conventional fuel rods. The coolant to fuel volume fraction is reduced to 0.085, one-sixth of that of RMWR. The volume fraction remains unchanged with the diameter of the fuel rod. The thermal hydraulic design of the cores remains for the future study.

Improvements of Feedwater Controller for the Super Fast Reactor

The main steam temperature of SCWRs sensitively changes with the power-to-flow ratio. In this article, the feedwater controller of the Super FR (fast-spectrum SCWR) is modified from that of the Super LWR (thermal-spectrum SCWR) for suppressing the variation of the main steam temperature. A plant system analysis code SPRAT-F is used. One of three feedback terms is added to the original feedwater controller that took only the deviation of the main steam temperature into consideration. In the feedwater controller (A), the deviation of the power-to-flow ratio is considered. In the feedwater controller (B), the deviation of the power is considered. In the feedwater controller (C), the time derivative of the power is considered. All the modified feedwater controllers keep the variation of the main steam temperature within 2°C, which has been achieved in recent supercritical coal-fired power plants, against typical load change. In order to further confirm the performance of the modified feedwater controllers, five typical perturbations are analyzed. All the feedwater controllers including the original one stably control the Super FR against all the perturbations without a significant oscillation or offset. Among them, the feedwater controller (B) gives a smaller or at least not larger variation of the main steam temperature compared with the original one at all the perturbations, while the feedwater controllers (A) and (C) give a larger variation in particular cases. From these results, it is concluded that the original feedwater controller is successfully improved as the feedwater controller (B).

High Breeding Core of a Supercritical-Pressure Light Water Cooled Fast Reactor

Breeding of plutonium with light water cooling has been studied for many years, but high breeding to meet growing demand for electricity in a developed country has not been accomplished. The purpose of this study is to investigate a high breeding core of Super FBR (supercritical pressure light water cooled fast breeder reactor) with new fuel assemblies consisting of tightly packed fuel rods without gaps, which leads to low coolant to fuel volume fraction. The plant system of a Super FBR is once-through coolant cycle with high head pumps. The coolant flow rate is low due to the high enthalpy rise in the core. It is compatible with the high pressure drop of the new fuel assemblies. Both neutronic and thermal hydraulic design of the core is considered. The challenge of high breeding with light water cooling is to satisfy negative coolant void reactivity, high breeding and low enrichment simultaneously. The core with new assemblies has been designed with the average coolant density of 248 kg/m3. It is achieved by setting 380C inlet and 500C outlet temperature. For satisfying negative void reactivity, a solid moderator layer composed of zirconium hydride (ZrH) rods are adopted in some blanket assemblies. Cross sections of the blanket fuel assemblies with ZrH rods are prepared with assembly-wise calculation, because the pin-wise collision probability calculation overestimates the breeding. MOX fuel is used for seed fuel assemblies.Three types of core layouts with “radially heterogeneous”, “radiating” and “scattered” seed assemblies have been considered, and “radiating” layout shows best breeding characteristics among them. The seed assemblies in a “radiating” layout are not radially separated so that more numbers of blanket assemblies can be placed in high neutron flux region of a core. Fraction of blanket fuel assemblies with ZrH rods is selected for high breeding.Super FBR using the new fuel assemblies achieved both negative void and high plutonium breeding.© 2013 ASME

Single-pass core design of a low-temperature Super LWR

A supercritical-pressure light water cooled and moderated reactor (Super LWR) with a single-pass flow scheme is developed for simplifying upper core structures. Both coolant in the fuel channels and the water rods flow upward and are mixed in the upper plenum. It eliminates the moderator guide/distribution tubes in the upper core that were used in the previous Super LWR design adopting two-pass coolant flow scheme. This core design adopts a four-batch fuel management scheme and an out–in fuel loading pattern. One hundred and twenty-one fuel assemblies with an active height of 3.7 m are included. The flow rate fraction for water rods is 3.5%, and the thermal insulator is used to keep the moderator temperature below pseudocritical temperature. The equilibrium core is analyzed by using neutronic and thermal-hydraulic coupled calculation. The results show that the maximum cladding surface temperature (MCST) is limited to 485 °C with the average outlet temperature of 400 °C. The inherent safety is fulfilled by the positive water density reactivity coefficient and sufficient shutdown margin. On the other hand, the investigation of average outlet coolant temperature varying with MCST is carried out to explore the maximum outlet temperature by employing current MCST criterion and single-pass core design. The average outlet temperature increases with the MCST, and it achieves 465 °C with the thermal efficiency of 43.1% at the MCST criterion of 650 °C. The structure inside the reactor pressure vessel is simplified as a pressurized water reactor.

LOCA Analysis of Super Fast Reactor

This paper describes loss of coolant accident (LOCA) analyses of the Supercritical-pressure Water-Cooled Fast Reactor (Super Fast Reactor). The features of the Super Fast Reactor are high power density and downward flow cooled fuel channels for the improvement of the economic potential of the Super Fast Reactor with high outlet steam temperature. The LOCA induces large pressure and coolant density change in the core. This change influences the flow distribution among the downward flow parallel channels. It will affect the safety of the Super Fast Reactor. LOCA analysis of Super Fast Reactor is important to understand the safety features of the Super Fast Reactor. Keeping the flow rate in the core is important for the safety of the Super Fast Reactor. In LOCA, it is difficult to maintain an adequate flow rate due to the once-through coolant cycle and the downward flow cooled fuel assemblies. Therefore, the early actuation of the Automatic Depressurization System (ADS) and reduction of the maximum linear heat generation rates of the downward flow seed fuel assemblies and Low-Pressure Core Spray (LPCS) system are necessary for the Super Fast Reactor to cool the core under LOCA. Analysis results show that the Super Fast Reactor can satisfy the safety criteria with these systems.

Numerical Solution on Spherical Vacuum Bubble Collapse Using MPS Method

Single vacuum bubble collapse in subcooled water has been simulated using the moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) method in the present study. The liquid is described using moving particles, and the bubble-liquid interface was set to be the vacuum pressure boundary without interfacial heat mass transfer. The topological shape of the vacuum bubble is determined according to the location of interfacial particles. The time dependent bubble diameter, interfacial velocity, and bubble collapse time were obtained within a wide parametric range. Comparison with Rayleigh’s prediction indicates a good consistency, which validates the applicability and accuracy of the MPS method. The potential void-induced water hammer pressure pulse was also evaluated, which is instructive for the cavitation erosion study. The present paper discovers fundamental characteristics of vacuum bubble hydrodynamics, and it is also instructive for further applications of the MPS method to complicated bubble dynamics.

Reconstruction of cell homogenized macroscopic cross sections for analyzing fast and thermal coupled cores using the SRAC system

A fast and thermal neutron coupled core adopts blanket fuel assemblies with zirconium hydrides in the core for negative coolant void reactivity. Conventional neutronics calculation methods have been developed for analysis of a fast core or thermal core, in which the coarse-group macroscopic cross sections of fuel assemblies are prepared without including the effect of the surrounding fuel assemblies. However, such methods are not adequate for analyzing fast and thermal neutron coupled cores where the intra-assembly and inter-assembly heterogeneity effects must be precisely taken into account. Recently, a concept of reconstruction of cell homogenized macroscopic cross sections has been proposed to take into account effects of inter-assembly heterogeneities on macroscopic cross sections used in the reactor core analysis and successfully applied based on a Monte Carlo method. In the present study, a reconstruction method of cell homogenized coarse-group macroscopic cross section for analyzing fast and thermal coupled cores is developed based on a deterministic neutronics calculation code system, SRAC. Three types of fixed source calculations for unit assembly cell geometry are performed independently of the specific core layouts and their results are combined with the results of core analysis to produce cell homogenized coarse-group macroscopic cross sections. Numerical results show that the heterogeneity effects can be adequately reflected in the reconstructed macroscopic cross sections with the proposed method. When the number of energy groups is small, the proposed method gives poor results in the transitional energy groups from resonance to thermal energy. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the number of energy groups in this energy range.

Safety Analysis of a Super Fast Reactor With Upward Flow Cooling in Two Pass at Supercritical Pressure

Safety characteristics of the supercritical-pressure light water-cooled fast reactor (Super FR) with upward flow core cooling in two pass is investigated for the abnormal transients and accidents at supercritical pressure. Upward flow cooling has advantage of simplifying the upper core structure in comparison with the downward flow scheme that part of the coolant flows downward in the blanket fuel assemblies from the top dome of reactor pressure vessel. It also has advantages that flow stagnation does not occur at loss of coolant flow events due to the buoyancy of the coolant. The coolant flow scheme of this design is the all blanket fuel assemblies and part of the seed fuel assemblies are cooled with upward flow first, the coolant flows radially above the core and flow downward in the gap between the core and the shroud to the lower mixing plenum and cools the rest of seed fuel assemblies with upward flow till the upper mixing plenum before core outlet. To evaluate the safety performance, eleven transients and four accidents at supercritical-pressure are analyzed. Safety analysis results show that the safety criteria are satisfied with large margins for all the selected transients and accidents. But in the total loss of coolant flow accident the MCST (maximum cladding surface temperature) is still high. Because of this flow scheme, it is found that the MCST is sensitive to the volume of the gap between two pass. Actuating depressurization valves with low flow single at total loss of flow events is effective to induce flow for once-through SCWR and therefore improves safety performance.© 2013 ASME

Numerical Simulation on Direct Contact Condensation of Single Bubble in Subcooled Water using MPS method

In present study, single steam bubble condensation in subcooled water have been simulated by using Moving Particle Semi‐implicit(MPS) method. The liquid phase was described using moving particles and the two phase interface was set to be movable boundary which can be easily traced according to the motion of interfacial particles. The transient bubble deformation behaviors have been obtained and the results showed that both initial bubble size and subcooled degree influence bubble deformation behaviors greatly. Larger bubble experiences more severe deformation at lower liquid subcooled degree while bubble keeps near sphericity at higher liquid subcooled degree. All transient shape sequences can be found and explained properly in Grace’s graphic correlation. This work exhibits some fundamental characteristics of bubble condensation using MPS‐MAFL which is expected to be further adopted to evaluate other complicated bubble dynamics problems.

THREE-DIMENSIONAL CORE DESIGN OF A SUPER FAST REACTOR WITH A HIGH POWER DENSITY

The SuperCritical Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR) pursues high power density to reduce its capital cost. The fast spectrum SCWR, called a super fast reactor, can be designed with a higher power density than thermal spectrum SCWR. The mechanism of increasing the average power density of the super fast reactor is studied theoretically and numerically. Some key parameters affecting the average power density, including fuel pin outer diameter, fuel pitch, power peaking factor, and the fraction of seed assemblies, are analyzed and optimized to achieve a more compact core. Based on those sensitivity analyses, a compact super fast reactor is successfully designed with an average power density of 294.8 W/cm3. The core characteristics are analyzed by using three-dimensional neutronics/thermal-hydraulics coupling method. Numerical results show that all of the design criteria and goals are satisfied.