Possible design of PBR for passive decay heat removal

Abstract

Conditions for design parameters of above-ground and underground, prismatic high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR)s for passive decay heat removal based on fundamental heat transfer mechanisms were obtained in the previous works. In the present study, analogous conditions were obtained for pebble bed reactors by performing the same procedure using the model for heat transfer in porous media of COMSOL 4.3a software, and the results were compared. For the power density profile, several approximated distributions together with original one throughout the 10-MWt high-temperature gas-cooled reactor-test module (HTR-10) were used, and it was found that an HTR-10 with a uniform power density profile has the higher safety margin than those with other profiles. In other words, the safety features of a PBR can be enhanced by flattening the power density profile. We also found that a prismatic HTGR with a uniform power density profile throughout the core has a greater safety margin than a PBR with the same design characteristics. However, when the power density profile is not flattened during the operation, the PBR with the linear power density profile has more safety margin than the prismatic HTGR with the same design parameters and with the power density profile by cosine and Bessel functions.