Development and Application of a Fast Running Model for the Description of Coolant Mixing Inside the Pressure Vessel of Pressurized Water Reactors


Development and Application of a Fast Running Model for the Description of Coolant Mixing Inside the Pressure Vessel of Pressurized Water Reactors

Kliem, S.; Prasser, H.-M.; Höhne, T.; Rohde, U.

An efficient semi-analytical model for the description of the coolant mixing during stationary and transient processes inside the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) of pressurised water reactors (PWR) has been developed. Both boron concentration and coolant temperature mixing are described by a dimensionless mixing scalar which is transported with the fluid and is subject of turbulent dispersion, but does not affect the flow field. This model is based on the technique of linear superposition of response functions on Dirac impulse shaped perturbations of the mixing scalar. In the model, the RPV is represented formally by a group of transfer systems (for each combination of inlet nozzle position and fuel element position one) with one input and one output each. These systems have different transfer properties which are determined by the flow field and turbulent mixing being strongly dependent on geometrical details of the flow domain. In this work, one way of obtaining the transfer properties is shown on the example of the German PWR KONVOI. The validation of the model against experimental data from the 1:5 scaled coolant mixing test facility ROCOM is presented.
The semi-analytical model for the description of coolant mixing has been used in combination with the 3D reactor dynamics code DYN3D for the analysis of a hypothetical boron dilution event after start-up of the first main coolant pump (MCP) in a generic four-loop PWR. The model provides realistic time-dependent boron concentration fields at the core inlet. By varying the initial plug volume it was found, that for the given core configuration plugs of less than 20 m3 did not lead to a re-criticality of the shut-off reactor.
Besides the modelling of the coolant mixing inside the RPV, a proper description of the boron transport in the reactor core in the considered case was absolutely necessary to calculate the neutron kinetic behaviour of the core correctly. Otherwise the numerical diffusion distorts the boron front and the reactivity insertion is smoothed artificially. In DYN3D, a particle-in-cell method is used to describe the boron transport without numerical diffusion.
The semi-analytical model is not restricted to one reactor type. The transfer properties used in the model can be explored also by means of computational fluid dynamics codes (CFD). The use of calculated response functions allows to apply the model for the description of coolant mixing in different geometry (i.e. RPV of VVER) and under various conditions without performing additional experiments.

  • Lecture (Conference)
    11. AER Symposium on VVER Reactor Physics and Reactor Safety, Csopak, Hungary, September 24-28, 2001, Proceedings pp. 449-463
  • Contribution to proceedings
    11. AER Symposium on VVER Reactor Physics and Reactor Safety, Csopak, Hungary, September 24-28, 2001, Proceedings pp. 449-463

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Publ.-Id: 4161