Coupled characteristics and performance of heat pipe cooled reactor with closed Brayton cycle

Abstract

Heat pipe cooled reactors with closed Brayton cycle (CBC) have the potential of achieving both high efficiency and high safety. However, the coupled characteristics and performance of CBC coupled with heat pipe reactors have not been well studied. Few works consider both the neutron dynamics in heat pipe cooled reactors and the dynamic heat and mass transfer in CBC. In this paper, a novel nuclear power system configuration, heat pipe cooled reactor with CBC, is proposed and comprehensively analyzed. A dynamic model is built based on the modular modeling idea, and verified using a Brayton cycle test bench. The proposed system has load following capability within certain motor speed, and its maximum thermal-electric energy conversion efficiency exceeds 20%. The dynamic charge amount control strategy is further proposed to improve efficiency. The maximum efficiency improvement is about 5% at 2kWe. The self-power-regulation and inherent passive safety of the reactor are verified through dynamic simulation. The power and temperature overshoots of the dynamic responses are selected as quantitative indicators of system dynamic performance. MAPs of the temperature and power overshoots for unit changes in output power are obtained, and can be used to evaluate the system safety during dynamic operations.