Feasibility study of a prestressed-concrete containment vessel for a novel GFR nuclear reactor

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F46356088%3A_____%2F23%3AN0000010" target="_blank" >RIV/46356088:_____/23:N0000010 - isvavai.cz</a>

Alternative codes found

RIV/68407700:21110/23:00366069

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141029623005333" target="_blank" >https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141029623005333</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2023.116119" target="_blank" >10.1016/j.engstruct.2023.116119</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Feasibility study of a prestressed-concrete containment vessel for a novel GFR nuclear reactor

Original language description

The latest modern nuclear energy systems currently researched and developed are the Generation IV (Gen IV) nuclear reactors, and one of the more promising Gen IV designs is the Gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR). Among the number of challenging problems of the design of GFR, the development of passive safety systems ensuring passive decay heat removal (DHR) during loss-of-coolant-accidents (LOCA) is of the highest importance. The currently proposed DHR strategy relies on intentionally increasing pressure inside a gas-tight guard vessel containing the reactor to approximately 4 bar. This, however, presents a significant engineering challenge as the vessel must be capable of withstanding high pressure of up to 10 bar, due to pressure spikes and safety coefficients, while also withstanding increased temperatures during the LOCA. As no GFR guard vessel has ever been designed, this paper presents a feasibility study establishing whether such vessel can be designed. The feasibility study is aimed at the assessment of a preconceptual design of a prestressed concrete vessel previously created by the authors. In the study, stresses in the structure induced by normal-operation loads and LOCA loads are calculated for three types of extreme constraint conditions covering all possible real constraints of the structure. The calculations are based on heat transfer equations, Euler-Bernoulli theory, and Lame equation implemented in a in-house Python code. In the results, stresses in the vessel are presented and compared to design criteria. The main conclusion of the paper is that the vessel can be designed; however, certain adverse phenomena which complicate the design process, such as non-linear creep of concrete and occurrence of tensile stress up to 1 MPa, will have to be addressed and considered during future detailed design. Following on from this affirmative conclusion, the authors will create the detailed design using advanced three-dimensional modelling in their future work.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

20501 - Materials engineering

Project

<a href="/en/project/TK01030116" target="_blank" >TK01030116: Conceptual design of safety-important components of helium-cooled fast demonstration reactor ALLEGRO</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Engineering Structures

ISSN

0141-0296

e-ISSN

1873-7323

Volume of the periodical

286

Issue of the periodical within the volume

April

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

22

Pages from-to

1-22

UT code for WoS article

000981743900001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85152131899