SIMULATION OF OPERATIONAL CONDITIONS OF FASSIP-02 NATURAL CIRCULATION COOLING SYSTEM EXPERIMENTAL LOOP

Abstract

CIRCULATION COOLING SYSTEM EXPERIMENTAL LOOP. The natural circulation is considered in the design of emergency passive core cooling system in a nuclear power plant. In that context, FASSIP-02 experimental loop is designed in order to investigate the characteristics of the natural circulation in a closed loop. This paper simulates the various operational conditions of FASSIP-02. The objective is to obtain the best operational conditions of FASSIP- 02 once it is built. For that purpose, the simulation is done with different condition of the heater power, the pipe insulation and the expansion tank's valve using RELAP5 code. The simulation time is up to 50,000 s. The simulation results show that until 50,000 s the steady state condition could not be achieved yet when the heater power greater than 10 kW. The pipe insulation causes faster increase of the water temperature inside the pipe and the induced water flow rate, as well. While, if the expansion tank's valve is closed during the operation, the pressure inside the loop would increase, faster when the heater power is higher and could reach the critical pressure. It is concluded that in all cases to avoid the saturation condition, the heater power should