Benito Mignacca, G. Locatelli, Mahmoud Alaassar, D. Invernizzi
{"title":"We Never Built Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), but What Do We Know About Modularization in Construction?","authors":"Benito Mignacca, G. Locatelli, Mahmoud Alaassar, D. Invernizzi","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-81604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-81604","url":null,"abstract":"The key characteristics of small modular reactors (SMRs), as their name emphasized, are their size and modularity. Since SMRs are a family of novel reactor designs, there is a gap of empirical knowledge about the cost/benefit analysis of modularization. Conversely, in other sectors (e.g. Oil & Gas) the empirical experience on modularization is much greater. This paper provides a structured knowledge transfer from the general literature (i.e. other major infrastructure) and the Oil & Gas sector to the nuclear power plant construction world. Indeed, in the project management literature, a number of references discuss the costs and benefits determined by the transition from the stick-built construction to modularization, and the main benefits presented in the literature are the reduction of the construction cost and the schedule compression. Additional costs might arise from an increased management hurdle and higher transportation expenses. The paper firstly provides a structured literature review of the benefits and costs of modularization divided into qualitative and quantitative references. In the second part, the paper presents the results of series of interviews with Oil & Gas project managers about the value of modularization in this sector.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87468330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A New Method of Integrating the RELAP5 to the RINSIM Simulation Platform","authors":"Chao Tan, V. Quiroga, Z. Fu, Zhengquan Xie","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-82016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-82016","url":null,"abstract":"This paper introduces a method to control the calculation progress of the RELAP5 codes and integrate them with other codes by interacting boundary data (such as general tables, TDVs and TDJs) at each step.\u0000 This work is basically finished with the support of the RINSIM simulation platform. The paper gives a brief introduction on RINSIM that how it controls the codes progress, sends the codes control commands, shares the values of different codes’ common blocks or modules.\u0000 However, the work can’t be done by just using the RINSIM, it also needs to modify RELAP5 codes. With the codes’ modification of commands responding, data reading/writing interface, data interacting interface, time step control and so on, we can build interface subroutines to integrate codes onto the RINSIM.\u0000 At the end, the paper gives out the result of a transient calculation with an advanced PWR model. Compared to some old integration method, the new method has far more strong stability. And the result shows that the integration progress of the code does not obviously affect the calculation accuracy, but definitely extends the application fields because of the multiple functions supplied by the RINSIM.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"212 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77121036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coordinated Control of a Small Pressurized Water Reactor","authors":"Peiwei Sun, Chongwu Wang","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-81156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-81156","url":null,"abstract":"Small Pressurized Water Reactors (SPWR) are different from those of the commercial large Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs). There are no hot legs and cold legs between the reactor core and the steam generators like in the PWR. The coolant inventory is in a large amount. The inertia of the coolant is large and it takes a long time for the primary system to respond to disturbances. Once-through steam generator is adopted and its water inventory is small. It is very sensitive to disturbances. These unique characteristics challenge the control system design of an SPWR. Relap5 is used to model an SPWR. In the reactor power control system, both the reactor power and the coolant average temperature are regulated by the control rod reactivity. In the feedwater flow control system, the coordination between the reactor and the turbine is considered and coolant average temperature is adopted as one measurable disturbance to balance them. The coolant pressure is adjusted based on the heaters and spray in the pressurizer. The water level in the pressurizer is controlled by the charging flow. Transient simulations are carried out to evaluate the control system performance. When the reactor is perturbed, the reactor can be stabilized under the control system.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"114 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85498750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
X. Kong, Yuan Fu, Jianyu Zhang, Hui-Ju Lu, Naxiu Wang
{"title":"Upgrade and Shakedown Test of a High Temperature Fluoride Salt Test Loop","authors":"X. Kong, Yuan Fu, Jianyu Zhang, Hui-Ju Lu, Naxiu Wang","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-81222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-81222","url":null,"abstract":"A FLiNaK high temperature test loop, which was designed to support the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) program, was constructed in 2012 and is the largest engineering-scale fluoride loop in the world. The loop is built of Hastelloy C276 and is capable of operating at the flow rate up to 25m3/h and at the temperature up to 650°C. It consists of an overhung impeller sump-type centrifugal pump, an electric heater, a heat exchanger, a freeze valve and a mechanical one, a storage tank, etc. Salt purification was conducted in batch mode before it was transferred to and then stored in the storage tank. The facility was upgraded in three ways last year, with aims of testing a 30kW electric heater and supporting the heat transfer experiment in heat exchanger. Firstly, an original 100kW electric heater was replaced with a 335kW one to compensate the overlarge heat loss in the radiator. A pressure transmitter was subsequently installed in the inlet pipe of this updated heater. Finally, a new 30kW electric heater was installed between the pump and radiator, the purpose of which was to verify the core’s convective heat transfer behavior of a simulator design of TMSR. Immediately after these above works, shakedown test of the loop was carried out step by step. At first the storage tank was gradually preheated to 500°C so as to melt the frozen salt. Afterwards, in order to make the operation of transferring salt from storage tank to loop achievable, the loop system was also preheated to a relatively higher temperature 530°C. Since the nickel-base alloy can be severely corroded by the FLiNaK salt once the moisture and oxygen concentration is high, vacuum pumping and argon purging of the entire system were alternatively performed throughout the preheating process, with the effect of controlling them to be lower than 100ppm. Once the salt was transferred into the loop, the pump was immediately put into service. At the very beginning of operation process, it was found that flow rate in the main piping could not be precisely measured by the ultrasonic flow meter. Ten days later, the pump’s dry running gas seal was out of order. As a result, the loop had to be closed down to resolve these issues.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"139 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86263626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Methodology to Determine SMR Build Schedule and the Impact of Modularisation","authors":"C. Lloyd, A. Roulstone","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-81550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-81550","url":null,"abstract":"Light-water cooled Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are a potential game-changing technology for energy supply. The potential benefits of SMRs are however conditional on solving the key standardisation and construction issues that have troubled large reactor (LR) projects, which have in turn led to high build costs and long project durations.\u0000 Initiatives to determine the build schedule of SMRs are hindered by a lack of SMR construction experience and related data. The methodology used in this paper, to deal with the lack of SMR-specific data, draws conclusions about SMRs based on data from actual large pressurised water reactor (PWR) construction experience.\u0000 It is expected that SMR build schedules can be greatly reduced because of the smaller physical size of structures, fewer components, and other size-related features. However, the construction work space will be more constrained, which could negatively impact build durations. As a result, simple geometric scaling and reduction arguments cannot necessarily be applied to SMR schedules. This paper defines the key areas in which SMR construction differs from LRs, such as smaller geometries as well as modularised and standardised build processes, and describes how these differences might be expected to impact build duration quantitatively.\u0000 The model developed in this paper presents an approach to determining SMR build schedule durations for a range of reactor sizes. It starts with an LR build schedule based on real data from the UK’s only PWR, Sizewell B. The available data are used to establish a reference point for a non-modular, stick-built SMR schedule. This scheduling approach assumes that, for each major element, part of the time spent on fabrication and installation tasks will vary with reactor size while the remaining fraction will remain constant regardless of reactor size (e.g. due to quality assurance and commissioning tasks). The accuracy of the model generated here is assessed against available construction data and models from a range of actual reactor build projects.\u0000 The objective of this work is to consider how modularisation can reduce build schedule of SMRs of varying size, by employing modular design and construction principles to both remove tasks that are of long duration from the critical path and to improve construction productivity. Mechanisms by which modularisation reduces build schedule are investigated. Build reduction scenarios are presented based on analysis and subsequent modularisation of the SMR critical path and are compared with other related analyses.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"68 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78203496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
K. Ichikawa, H. Kanda, N. Yoshioka, K. Ara, Jun-ichi Saito, K. Nagai
{"title":"Estimation of Mitigation Effects of Sodium Nanofluid for SGTR Accidents in SFR","authors":"K. Ichikawa, H. Kanda, N. Yoshioka, K. Ara, Jun-ichi Saito, K. Nagai","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-81309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-81309","url":null,"abstract":"Studies on the suppression of the reactivity of sodium itself have been performed on the basis of the concept of suspended nanoparticles in liquid sodium (sodium nanofluid). According to the theoretical and experimental results of studies for sodium nanofluid, velocity and heat of sodium nanofluid reaction with water (sodium nanofluid/water reaction) are lower than those of the pure sodium/water reaction. The analytical model for the peak temperature of a sodium nanofluid/water reaction jet has been developed by the authors in consideration of these suppression effects. In this paper, the prediction method for mitigation effects on damage of adjacent tubes in steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) accidents is developed by applying this analytical model for the peak temperature of the reaction jet. On the assumption that the sodium nanofluid is used for the secondary coolant of sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR), mitigation effects under the design basis accident (DBA) condition and the design extension condition (DEC) of SGTR are estimated by using this method. The results indicate a clear possibility to reduce the number of damaged tubes and to suppress the pressure generated in SGTR accidents by using sodium nanofluid as the secondary coolant.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73425112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Residual Unbalanced Mass Determination of an AMBs Controlled Rotor Based on Control Current Analysis of the Feedback Loop","authors":"Tianpeng Fan, Zhe Sun, Xiaoshen Zhang, Xunshi Yan, Jingjing Zhao, Zhengang Shi","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-81575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-81575","url":null,"abstract":"Active magnetic bearing technology is used more and more for its high performance, such as high speed and frictionless operation. But the rotor vibrates sometimes during operation due to the existence of residual unbalanced mass, which may affect the security of the whole system. In order to determine the distribution of residual unbalanced mass, this paper proposes a method based on frequency response, control current analysis, and image data processing. The theoretical and calculated results show the validity of the method.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90014537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chen Lei, Jia Zhen, W. Cong, Gong Zili, Liao Yi, Hu Chen
{"title":"A Multi-Objective Optimization of the Reactor Power Plant","authors":"Chen Lei, Jia Zhen, W. Cong, Gong Zili, Liao Yi, Hu Chen","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-82239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-82239","url":null,"abstract":"From the view of practical engineering application, a compacter nuclear power plant is expected. The weight and the volume of a nuclear power plant can be reduced by optimal selection of the operational parameters. In this work, a thermal-hydraulic model of the reactor, mathematical models of the reactor vessel, the main pipe, the pressurizer, the steam generator, the turbine and the condenser were established for the Qinshan-I nuclear power plant based on the related technical materials. The responses of the optimal targets to the changes of the design variables were studied by the sensitivity analyses. The non-dominated solution front of the nuclear power plant was obtained by means of the immune memory clone constrained multi-objective optimization algorithm. The study shows that the component mathematical models are reliable for the optimization process, the distribution of the non-dominated solution is decided by the steam generator secondary pressure. The volume and the weight of the system could be at least reduced by 23.0% and 9.5%, respectively.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89650334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Study on the Operating Strategy Optimization of Moving to Remote Shutdown Station When Main Control Room Is Un-Inhabitable","authors":"Li Li, Zhang Shengtao, Xu Zhao, Du Yu","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-81480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-81480","url":null,"abstract":"For PWR, remote shutdown station (RSS) is a redundant control mean to shut down the reactor when main control room (MCR) inhabitation is challenged (e.g. fire, smoke...). Nowadays, due to nuclear power plants control measures were improved with DCS system, a full function DCS RSS was equipped and more essential equipment could be controlled on RSS.\u0000 Under operating conditions that prohibit nuclear power plant operators to stay in the main control room, the operators should move to RSS and shutdown the reactor to ensure plant safety following (RSS strategy for short) to fallback the plant from power operation to cold shutdown. The original operating strategy by nature circulation is no longer the best choice both for operation safety and economy efficiency, and an optimized new strategy should be raised.\u0000 Based on the former reason, an optimized operation strategy was raised in this paper. In the optimized strategy, all plant normal standard operation modes were considered as initial conditions, rather than only considering power operation condition in the original one. The fallback mode and fallback strategy for each initial condition was also designed and optimized. To accelerate the depression and heat removal process, a forced circulation operation strategy is adopted when the reactor coolant pumps are available, and less local operation was included by taking advantages of the full function operating measures on RSS. To simplify the whole procedure structure, the operation modules of other general operating procedures are reused.\u0000 To validate the effectiveness of the optimized operating strategy, a full scope PWR simulation tool was employed to make thermo hydraulic calculation validation of the reactor response and also the remote control station HMI supporting validation. By simulating the original strategy and the optimized one and related analysis, we found that the optimized strategy is effective, and able to be executed based on the remote control station hardware. By executing the optimized strategy, the unit can fall back to the cold shutdown condition safely and a few hours were saved compared with the original strategy. The optimized strategy had already been implemented on real PWR nuclear power plant.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"150 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77384322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dynamic Control Analysis of the AFR-100 SMR SFR With a Supercritical CO2 Cycle and Dry Air Cooling: Part II — Plant Control Under Varying Ambient Conditions","authors":"A. Moisseytsev, J. Sienicki","doi":"10.1115/ICONE26-82295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE26-82295","url":null,"abstract":"Supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle power converters can benefit advanced nuclear reactors, as well as small modular reactors, by reducing the plant cost and increasing plant electrical output. The sCO2 cycles can also be designed for operation under direct dry air cooling. The paper presents the results of the coupled control analysis of a sCO2 cycle for a 100 MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor under changing ambient air temperatures. The optimum plant operation modes are identified.","PeriodicalId":65607,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Plant Engineering and Management","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88007426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}