An Experimental study on natural circulation decay heat removal system for a loop type fast reactor

Ono, Ayako ; Kamide, Hideki ; Kobayashi, Jun ; Doda, Norihiro  ; Watanabe, Osamu*

Decay heat removal by natural circulation is a significant passive safety measure of a fast reactor against station blackout. The decay heat removal system (DHRS) of the loop type sodium fast reactor being designed in Japan comprises a direct reactor auxiliary cooling system and primary reactor auxiliary cooling system (PRACS). The thermal hydraulic phenomena in the plant under natural circulation conditions need to be understood for establishing a reliable natural circulation driven DHRS. In this study, sodium experiments were conducted using a plant dynamic test loop to understand the thermal-hydraulic phenomena considering natural circulation in the plant. The experiments simulating the scram transient confirmed that PRACS started up smoothly under natural circulation, and the simulated core was stably cooled after the scram. Moreover, the experiments varying the pressure loss coefficients of the loop as the experimental parameters showed robustness of the PRACS.