Abstract
Owing to the inherent instability of the natural circulation system, flow instability can easily occur during the operation of a natural circulation lead-cooled fast reactor, especially during the startup phase. A comprehensive startup scheme for SNCLFR-100, including primary and secondary circuits, is proposed in this paper. It references existing more mature startup schemes in various reactor types. It additionally considers the restriction conditions on the power increase in other schemes and the characteristics of lead-based coolant. On this basis, the multi-scale coupling code ATHLET-OpenFOAM was used to study the flow instability in the startup phase under different power-step amplitudes and power duration times. The results showed that obvious flow instability phenomena were found in the different startup schemes, such as the short-term backflow phenomenon of the core at the initial time of the startup. Moreover, an obvious increase in the flow rate and temperature to the peak value at the later stage of a continuous power rise was observed, as well as continuous oscillations before reaching a steady state. It was determined that the scheme with smaller power-step amplitude and a longer power duration time requires more time to start the reactor. Nevertheless, it will be more conducive to the safe and stable startup of the reactor.
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Abbreviations
- m :
-
Mass flow rate (kg/s)
- T :
-
Temperature (°C)
- P :
-
Pressure (MPa)
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Acknowledgements
Thank GRS for providing the ATHLET-OpenFOAM coupling code.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Wen-Shun Duan, Ze-Ren Zou, Xiao Luo, and Hong-Li Chen. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Wen-Shun Duan, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Duan, WS., Zou, ZR., Luo, X. et al. Startup scheme optimization and flow instability of natural circulation lead-cooled fast reactor SNCLFR-100. NUCL SCI TECH 32, 133 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-021-00970-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-021-00970-3