CFD simulation on the transient process of coolant mixing phenomenon in reactor pressure vessel

Abstract

The emergency coolant cooling system (ECCS) is designed to inject coolant into reactor pressure vessel (RPV) during loss of coolant accidents, ensuring the sufficient coolant inventory in the nuclear reactor core. During this process, the cold water mixes with high temperature coolant in the primary loop, making the wall of RPV and cold legs suffer severe pressurized thermal shock (PTS) and threatens the integrity of primary loop. In this study, coolant mixing phenomena in the experiment UPTF, which is a 1/1 full-scale model of the PWR with four coolant loops in Germany, was studied numerically using the CFD software Fluent. The best practice guideline for coolant mixing study using CFD method in the reactor primary loop and RPV, including the suitable turbulent model, geometry simplification and mesh conditions, was concluded. The detailed three dimensional thermal hydraulic parameter distributions were achieved and the effect of coolant injection rates on the mixing process is also obtained. Results show that the mixing effect is enhanced due to the existence of reverse flow at the core entrance sections. The high injection rate provides more timely coolant supplement and reduces the possible core exposure time. However, as the injection rate increases, more intensive disturbance on the temperature and velocity fields appear, which is more likely to cause the thermal fatigue.