Thermal hydraulic design of a 2400 MW t̳h̳ direct supercritical CO₂-cooled fast reactor

The gas cooled fast reactor (GFR) has received new attention as one of the basic concepts selected by the Generation-IV International Forum (GIF) for further investigation. Currently, the reference GFR is a helium-cooled direct cycle plant with core outlet temperatures in the 850"C to 10000C range. Pursued in the interest of high cycle efficiency and the provision of process heat for hydrogen production by thermochemical water cracking, these high temperatures present materials challenges which may prove difficult to overcome in the near future. By taking advantage of the low compressibility of CO2 near its critical point, the supercritical CO2 (S-CO2) recompression cycle can achieve an efficiency of 48% with a relatively low core outlet temperature of 650'C. The 4-loop 2400 MWth direct S-CO2 cooled fast reactor under investigation at MIT is thus a lower-temperature alternative to the mainstream helium cooled GFR design. A steady state core design was developed which utilizes an innovative, high fuel volume fraction, vented Tube-In-Duct (TID) fuel assembly. Through an extensive series of iterative calculations, RELAP5-3D was then used to evaluate the natural circulation performance of an active/passive hybrid Shutdown/Emergency Cooling System (SCS/ECS). Routes were identified by which significant post-LOCA core bypass could occur and degrade the decay heat removal performance. Moderately-sized blowers were shown to be capable of overcoming even extreme core bypass routes. An active SCS/ECS was thus adopted for the reference design.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Pope, Michael A. (Michael Alexander)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael J. Driscoll.

• Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41279

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/41279