CFD simulation of thermal discharge behaviour in the Kadra reservoir at the Kaiga atomic power station

Abstract

Abstract The thermal pollution arising out of discharge of hot water from the power plant condensers into the natural water bodies such as rivers, lakes, reservoirs, oceans etc. has been a serious concern to environmentalists ever since the plants started operating world over. In the past forty to fifty years, the methods of calculations for predicting the velocity and temperature fields in the affected regions of the stagnant/flowing water bodies have undergone a significant improvement. Currently, use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes for performing these calculations is gaining popularity. However, several factors such as the assumed computational domain and its discretisation, the boundary conditions used, representation of hydrodynamic characteristics (laminar/turbulent, buoyant/non-buoyant), etc. have a strong influence on the accuracy of predictions by such a model. A CFD code STAR-CD has been used for analyzing the thermal plume behaviour in the Kadra reservoir at Kaiga Atomic Power Station (KAPS). The predictions from these calculations of two units in operation have been found to be in good agreement with the site data made available from earlier studies. The present paper briefly describes the model developed using STAR-CD and results obtained for the Kadra reservoir at KAPS.