Study on Neutronics and Thermalhydraulics Characteristics of 1200 MWel Pressure Channel Supercritical Water Cooled Reactor

Abstract

Nuclear power becomes more and more important in many countries worldwide as a basis for current and future electrical energy generation. The largest group of operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) equipped with watercooled reactors (96% of all NPPs) has gross thermal efficiencies ranging from 30–36%. Such relatively low values of thermal efficiencies are due to lower pressures/temperatures at the inlet to a turbine (4.5–7.8  MPa/257–293آ°C). However, modern combinedcycle power plants (Brayton gasturbine cycle and subcriticalpressure steam Rankine cycle, fueled by natural gas) and supercriticalpressure coalfired power plants have reached gross thermal efficiencies of 62% and 55%, respectively. Therefore, next generation or Generation IV NPPs with watercooled reactors should have thermal efficiencies as close as possible to those of modern thermal power plants. A significant increase in thermal efficiencies of watercooled NPPs can be possible only due to increasing turbine inlet parameters above the critical point of water, i.e., supercritical watercooled reactors (SCWRs) have to be designed. This path of increasing thermal efficiency is considered as a conventional way that coalfired power plants followed more than 50 years ago. Therefore, an objective of the current paper is a study on neutronics and thermalhydraulics characteristics of a generic 1200MWel pressurechannel (PCh) SCWR. Standard neutronics codes DRAGON and DONJON have been coupled with a new thermalhydraulics code developed based on the latest empirical heattransfer correlation, which allowed for more accurate estimation of basic characteristics of a PCh SCWR. In addition, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) Fluent code has been used for better understanding of the specifics of heat transfer in supercritical water. Future studies will be dedicated to materials and fuels testing in an inpile supercritical water loop and developing passive safety systems.