Core thermal-hydraulics analysis during dipped-type direct heat exchanger operation in natural circulation conditions

Hamase, Erina ; Miyake, Yasuhiro*; Imai, Yasutomo*; Doda, Norihiro  ; Ono, Ayako ; Tanaka, Masaaki  

To enhance the safety of sodium-cooled fast reactors, a dipped-type direct heat exchanger (D-DHX) has been investigated in a natural circulation decay heat removal system. During the D-DHX operation, the core-plenum interactions occurs and the thermal-hydraulics in the reactor vessel (RV) is complicated, the establishment of thermal-hydraulic analysis model in the RV for computational fluid dynamics code (RV-CFD) is required to simulate the thermal stratification in the upper plenum and thermal-hydraulics in the core. In this study, in terms of using RV-CFD for design study, the subchannel CFD model with low computational cost was adopted to the core of RV-CFD and the numerical simulation was carried out in comparison with the measured data in the sodium test facility named PLANDTL-1. As the result, the calculated sodium temperature in the core had good agreement with the experimental result and the applicability of the RV-CFD for the core-plenum interactions was confirmed.