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Integral thermal-hydraulic test facilities to support the development of the large passive nuclear power plant in China

 
CHANG Huajian, LI Yuquan, ZHAO Ruichang, HU Teng, WANG Han, and DAI Qing
 
State Nuclear Power Technology Research and Development Center, Haidian District, Beijing, 100190, China
 
Abstract: The first passive pressurized water reactor AP1000 and the upgraded power version CAP1400 are going to be developed and built in China. Several experimental facilities have been launched at the State Nuclear Power Technology Research and Development Center (SNPTRD) in order to assist with the design of the large passive nuclear power plant and focus on the study and the experimental research on the physical phenomena, characteristics and performance of the safety systems involved. For the Passive Core Cooling System (PXS), an integrated test facility named “ACME” (Advanced Core-cooling Mechanism Experiment) was designed and is currently under construction. With a 1/3 height scale, ACME has a 2-loop arrangement and the test reference pressure was chosen to represent the coolant saturation pressure in a LOCA. For the Passive Containment Cooling System (PCS), several separate-effect test facilities and an integral test facility are being set up: (1) separate experiments were designed for the testing of the water film flow, the water film heating, the steam condensation and heat transfer test, etc.; and (2) an integral test was designed for the study of integrated phenomena and physical features of the CAP1400-PCS. Also, a series of facilities specialized on the study of the performance and mechanisms of core-melt debris and features of In-Vessel Retention (IVR) are being designed. They consist of a metal layer demonstration experiment, and an External Reactor Vessel Cooling (ERVC) 3D experiment. All these test facilities are introduced in this paper.
Keyword: passive nuclear power plant; passive safety system; thermal-hydraulic test; severe accident; in-vessel retention
 
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