Safety studies on hydrogen production system with a high temperature gas-cooled reactor

Takeda, Tetsuaki

A primary-pipe rupture accident is one of the design-basis accidents of a High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR). When the primary-pipe rupture accident occurs, air is expected to enter the reactor core from the breach and oxidize in-core graphite structures. This paper describes an experiment and analysis of the air ingress phenomena and the method for the prevention of air ingress into the reactor during the primary-pipe rupture accident. The numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental ones regarding the density of the gas mixture, the concentration of each gas species produced by the graphite oxidation reaction and the onset time of the natural circulation of air. A hydrogen production system connected to the High-Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) is being designed to be able to produce hydrogen by themo-chemical Iodine-Sulfur process, using a nuclear heat of 10 MW supplied by the HTTR. The HTTR hydrogen production system is first connected to a nuclear reactor in the world; hence a permeation test of hydrogen isotopes through heat exchanger is carried out to obtain detailed data for safety review and development of analytical codes. This paper also describes an overview of the hydrogen permeation test and permeability of hydrogen and deuterium of Hastelloy XR.