This study is to investigate an effect of natural convection or natural circulation on a transport process by molecular diffusion in a stratified fluid layer consisting of two component gases. There are many experiments and analysis regarding natural convection in a vertical slot or natural circulation in a circular tube. However, there are few studies on natural convection or circulation with molecular diffusion in the stratified fluid layer consisting of two component gases. It is confirmed that these phenomena appear when the depressurization accident occurs in the very high temperature reactor (VHTR). Therefore it is important to evaluate the transport and mixing processes of two or more component gases during the depressurization accident of the VHTR. The experiment has been performed regarding the combined phenomena of molecular diffusion and natural convection or natural circulation in a parallel vertical slot filled with two component gases. The one vertical slot consists of the heated wall and the other side cooled wall. The other one consists of both the cooled wall. The dimension of heated wall is 500mm×200mm and thickness is 3mm. The width of the slot is 20mm and the aspect ratio of the slot is 25. Combination of nitrogen/argon is used as the two component gas system. The density change of the gas mixture and the gas temperature distribution in the slots were obtained. The mixing process of the heavier gas from the bottom side of the slot filled with the lighter gas was discussed in this paper.

An air-ingress accident followed by a pipe break is considered as a critical event for a very high temperature gas-cooled reactor (VHTR) safety. Following helium depressurization, it is anticipated that unless countermeasures are taken, air will enter the core through the break leading to oxidation of the in-core graphite structure. Thus, without mitigation features, this accident might lead to severe exothermic chemical reactions of graphite and oxygen depending on the accident scenario and the design. Under extreme circumstances, a loss of core structural integrity may occur along with excessive release of radiological inventory. Idaho National Laboratory under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy is performing research and development (R&D) that focuses on key phenomena important during challenging scenarios that may occur in the VHTR. Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table (PIRT) studies to date have identified the air ingress event, following on the heels of a VHTR depressurization, as very important (Oh et al. 2006, Schultz et al. 2006). Consequently, the development of advanced air ingress-related models and verification and validation (V&V) requirements are part of the experimental validation plan. This paper discusses about various air-ingress mitigation concepts applicable for the VHTRs. The study begins with identifying important factors (or phenomena) associated with the air-ingress accident using a root-cause analysis. By preventing main causes of the important events identified in the root-cause diagram, the basic air-ingress mitigation ideas can be conceptually derived. The main concepts include (1) preventing structural degradation of graphite supporters; (2) preventing local stress concentration in the supporter; (3) preventing graphite oxidation; (4) preventing air ingress; (5) preventing density gradient driven flow; (6) preventing fluid density gradient; (7) preventing fluid temperature gradient; (7) preventing high temperature. Based on the basic concepts listed above, various air-ingress mitigation methods are proposed in this study. Among them, the following one mitigation idea was extensively investigated using computational fluid dynamic codes (CFD) in terms of helium injection in the lower plenum. The main idea of the helium injection method is to replace air in the core and the lower plenum upper part by buoyancy force. This method reduces graphite oxidation damage in the severe locations of the reactor inside. To validate this method, CFD simulations are addressed here. A simple 2-D CFD model was developed based on the GT-MHR 600MWt as a reference design. The simulation results showed that the helium replaces the air flow into the core and significantly reduces the air concentration in the core and bottom reflector potentially protecting oxidation damage. According to the simulation results, even small helium flow was sufficient to remove air in the core, mitigating the air-ingress successfully.

Two design options of core distribution block (CDB) for a cooled-vessel design in the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) were developed and the influence on the core hot spot was investigated by the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, CFX-11. Isothermal CFD analyses were performed to estimate the coolant flow variation at the inlet of the coolant channel. The results predicted about 5% of the maximum velocity deviation when applying the core pressure drop of NHDD PMR200. A unit-cell CFD model was used to access the effect of the velocity deviation on the core hot spot. The unit-cell analyses were carried out for the velocity deviation of 0%, 5%, and 10%. Not only a constant power but also a local maximum power profile was considered. According to the results, the maximum fuel temperature was increased by about 30°C for the velocity deviation of 10% but still below the normal operation limit of 1250°C.

In this research, to obtain fundamental experimental data of transient heat transfer and to clarify the transient heat transfer process at wide experimental conditions for the safety assessment of very high temperature reactor (VHTR), forced convection transient heat transfer coefficients were measured for Helium, Carbon dioxide, Argon and Nitrogen gases flowing over a horizontal plate due to exponentially increasing heat input. The platinum ribbon with a thickness of 0.1 mm and a width of 4.0 mm was used as the test heater and heated by electric current. The heat generation rate was controlled and measured by a heat input control system, it was exponentially increased with a function of Q 0 exp(t/τ). The periods (e-fold times) of heat generation rate, τ, ranged from 46 ms to 17 s, the gas flow velocities ranged from 1 to 10 m/s, the pressures ranged from 400 kPa to 800 kPa, and the gas temperatures ranged from 290 to 353 K. It was clarified that the heat transfer coefficient approaches the quasi-steady-state one for the period longer than about 1 s, and it becomes higher for the period shorter than around 1 s. The heat transfer coefficient increases with the increases in pressure and velocity, and it shows some dependence on temperature at the experimental range of this research. The dependence of transient heat transfer on the gas flow velocity becomes weaker when the period becomes very shorter. Effect of gas thermal physical properties on heat transfer was investigated, and helium gas shows higher heat transfer coefficients than those of other gases due to its higher thermal conductivity. Empirical correlations for quasi-steady-state heat transfer and transient one for various gases were obtained based on the experimental data.