Typical application studies of thermal management technology in nuclear reactor

Thermal management technology is an indispensable key technology in the development of modern high-precision electronic devices, aiming to control the temperature of target objects within an allowable range. In nuclear reactors, characterized by high power density and long operating duration, represent a sustainable and clean energy source, favored by countries around the world. During normal operation, it is necessary to remove heat from the reactor core and heat-generating equipment to ensure the core operates safely and stably; in accident scenarios, the core of accident response failure in removing residual heat from the core to prevent temperatures from exceeding safety limits and causing more severe consequences. As the most complex system in a reactor, researching efficient thermal management systems is a necessary condition for ensuring the safety and efficient operation of DCS(Distributed control system) systems. DCS systems require the development of efficient thermal management systems to ensure their safe and efficient operation. The success or failure of thermal management in DCS systems directly impacts their performance, reliability, environmental comfort, and energy efficiency. In the industrial sector, thermal management technology has evolved from traditional air-cooling to more efficient cooling methods such as liquid cooling and phase-change cooling, significantly improving thermal management efficiency while enabling miniaturization and compactness of thermal management systems. Currently, DCS systems typically employ air-cooling for heat dissipation, resulting in large system sizes, high operational noise, and poor temperature control performance. With the increasing demands on DCS systems for miniaturization, modularization, digitization, and intelligence in nuclear power, coupled with the significant improvement in chip performance leading to a substantial increase in heat flux density, the air-cooling method with its low efficiency has become inadequate to meet the higher heat dissipation requirements of DCS systems. This paper conducts research on the application of thermal management technology in DCS thermal control design. A modular DCS board module model is established, and both air-cooling and liquid loop cooling methods are modeled, calculated, analyzed, and compared. Sensitivity analyses are also performed to provide references for the next step in designing efficient thermal management systems for DCS systems.