Study on performance evaluation of self-actuated shutdown system for sodium-cooled fast reactor; Investigation on flow field around curie point electromagnet

Aizawa, Kosuke ; Hiyama, Tomoyuki ; Kobayashi, Jun ; Kurihara, Akikazu 

Self-actuated shutdown system (SASS) is a passive reactor-shutdown system that utilizes a Curie-point electromagnet (CPEM), which features the characteristic of loss in magnetism when the magnet temperature reaches the Curie point. A control rod with SASS is inserted into the core by gravity without recourse to any active shutdown system. To allow the SASS to effectively function, efficiently guiding high-temperature fluid from the fuel assembly to CPEM is important. Therefore, CPEM features a complicated shape such as having 45 fins, and a flow collector is installed upstream of CPEM to direct the flow from the fuel subassembly outlet to CPEM. In this report, the water experiment was performed on the full-scale model that simulates from the outlets of the fuel assemblies to the SASS flow collector, and flow phenomena around the temperature sensing part was analyzed from the data obtained by PIV measurement.