The pressurized light water cooled, medium (1000 MWt) power plant IRIS (International Reactor Innovative and Secure) has been under development for three years by an international consortium of over twenty organizations from nine countries. The plant conceptual design was completed in 2001 and the preliminary design is currently underway. The pre-application licensing process with NRC was activated in October, 2002 and IRIS is one of the few designs considered by US utilities as part of the ESP (Early Site Permit) process. The novel features of the IRIS design, either from a safety performance and advance design point of view, provide a great opportunity for a more massive usage of Computational Fluid Dynamics in the process design for IRIS. A CFD-Group of international scientists, affiliate to the different IRIS parters has been formed and given the mission of investigating the many application opportunities for CFD with the goal also of verifing the gain in term of time, costs, resources saving over traditional design approaches. A first activity has been focused on identifying areas where CFD can be effectively used to support the design and analysis of the plant. For example, the following phenomena have been identified and selected for further considerations with CFD analyses: mixing phenomena (flow, temperature and boric acid) in the downcomer and lower plenum, boron and mixing phenomena in the pressurizer region, heat lossed and parasitic flow rates at some key locations in the pressurizer and reactor coolant system interface, and evaluations of the effectiveness of the bypass flow paths and the natural circulation flow path in the riser-steam generator regions. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the CFD design support program that has been defined for IRIS and discusses in some detail the main areas of investigation. Also, an overview of CFD competences as they are distributed within the different organizations is provided and the international cooperation program that will support this activity is presented. Beside supporting the IRIS design in some key areas, the main porpouse of this program is also testing the opportunity for CFD to be used as a design support “tool” for advanced nuclear plants operating within a set of well-defined and accepted standard procedure able to identify any strenght, limits and future possible impementation of computational analysis.
Computational Fluid Dynamics as a Virtual Facility for R&D in the IRIS Projet: An Overview
PACI, SANDRO;
2004-01-01
Abstract
The pressurized light water cooled, medium (1000 MWt) power plant IRIS (International Reactor Innovative and Secure) has been under development for three years by an international consortium of over twenty organizations from nine countries. The plant conceptual design was completed in 2001 and the preliminary design is currently underway. The pre-application licensing process with NRC was activated in October, 2002 and IRIS is one of the few designs considered by US utilities as part of the ESP (Early Site Permit) process. The novel features of the IRIS design, either from a safety performance and advance design point of view, provide a great opportunity for a more massive usage of Computational Fluid Dynamics in the process design for IRIS. A CFD-Group of international scientists, affiliate to the different IRIS parters has been formed and given the mission of investigating the many application opportunities for CFD with the goal also of verifing the gain in term of time, costs, resources saving over traditional design approaches. A first activity has been focused on identifying areas where CFD can be effectively used to support the design and analysis of the plant. For example, the following phenomena have been identified and selected for further considerations with CFD analyses: mixing phenomena (flow, temperature and boric acid) in the downcomer and lower plenum, boron and mixing phenomena in the pressurizer region, heat lossed and parasitic flow rates at some key locations in the pressurizer and reactor coolant system interface, and evaluations of the effectiveness of the bypass flow paths and the natural circulation flow path in the riser-steam generator regions. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the CFD design support program that has been defined for IRIS and discusses in some detail the main areas of investigation. Also, an overview of CFD competences as they are distributed within the different organizations is provided and the international cooperation program that will support this activity is presented. Beside supporting the IRIS design in some key areas, the main porpouse of this program is also testing the opportunity for CFD to be used as a design support “tool” for advanced nuclear plants operating within a set of well-defined and accepted standard procedure able to identify any strenght, limits and future possible impementation of computational analysis.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
