Performance of Sodium Natural Circulation Loop for Passvie Decay Heat Removal

Abstract

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) is developing a Generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor design equipped with a passive decay heat removal circuit (PDRC), which is a unique safety system in the design. The performance of the PDRC system is quite important for the safety in a simple system transient and also in an accident condition. In those situations, the heat generated in the core is transported to the ambient atmosphere by natural circulation of the PDRC loop. It is essential to investigate the performance of its heat removal capability through experiments for various operational conditions. Before the main experiments, KAERI is performing numerical studies for an evaluation of the performance of the PDRC system. First, the formation of a stable natural circulation is numerically simulated in a sodium test loop. Further, the performance of its heat removal at a steady state condition and at a transient condition is evaluated with the real design configuration in the KALIMER-600. The MARS-LMR code, which is developed for the system analysis of a liquid metal-cooled fast reactor, is applied to the analysis. In the present study, it is validated that the performance of natural circulation loop is enough to achieve the required passive heat removal for the PDRC. The most optimized modeling methodology is also searched for using various modeling approaches.