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is the characteristics provided to reduce chain reaction.

  1. Reactor Decay Heat

Operation of the boiler of a thermal power plant can be stopped and the steam supply is terminated by interrupting the fuel supply if an accident occurs and electricity generation has to be stopped. After the fuel has been burned away in the boiler, heat generation is terminated.

The chain reaction and generation of heat in a nuclear reactor are stopped by inserting control rods, but a low level of heat generation continues in the reactor. That is due to heat generation by decay of fission products (FPs) which are accumulated in the nuclear fuel in the reactor core during power operation. The decay heat represents about 7% of the operating power level just after the reactor is shut down. The decay heat decreases gradually with time after the shut down; it is about 1% after one hour. In other words, about 7% of the power during reactor operation is from the decay heat of FPs. Even after a reactor is shut down, reactor temperature and pressure do not decrease unless the decay heat is removed.

For instance, if an LOCA occurs and coolant water in the reactor core is lost, nuclear fission ceases but the fuel temperature could increase because of the decay heat until the fttel is damaged and eventually melted unless the decay heat is removed. The ECCS is provided to prevent such an accident. In addition to the ECCS, a decay heat removal system after normal reactor shutdown is also provided. After fuels are removed from the reactor core, the fuel decay heat is removed by the spent fuel storage pool cooling system and spent fuel transportation cask cooling system to prevent abnormal heating up of spent fuel.

  1. Confinement of fPs

In thermal power plants cinders such as Carbon dioxide are generated by burning fuel. Those are usually at a state of gas whose volume is very large and the storage is not practical and usually released to the atmosphere after process of removal of sulfuric and nitric substances to prevent threat to the health of public people.

On the other hand, FPs generated in a nuclear

reactor are radioactive, but they can be confined compactly since their volume is small. The basic policy of management of radioactive materials is to confine them in small volumes and not to allow their dispersion. 'Therefore, it is the basic policy to confine them surely inside fuel bars. The primary objectives of fuel design, core design, engineered safety features design and safety managements, etc. are to ensure integrity of fuels even at abnormal events, not to speak of the integrity at normal operation.

  1. Reactor Steam Conditions

In thermal power generation using steam, the higher the steam pressure and temperature are (the better steam condition), the more amount of work extracted and the higher thermal efficiency are realized. Therefore, efforts have been accumulated in design to improve the steam conditions.

Development of thermal power plants nowadays has made it possible to use boilers with super-super critical pressure and temperature (31.0 MPa [gage], about 560 *0 ) that exceeds super critical pressure and temperature (22.1 MPa (gage), 374.1513) and to realize high efficiency of electricity generation using turbine generator speeds of 3,000 to 3,600 rpm .

NPPs supply steam to turbine generators at about 6.9MPa (gage) and 28613 .

Use of super-critical steam for nuclear power generation is desirable from the standpoint of higher thermal efficiency. But design of nuclear power reactors with pressure and temperature as high as for thermal power plants is difficult at present because of problems with materials, etc. Constraints in the design of the reactor core and fuel may arise when using low density steam to remove heat from the reactor core since power density in the reactor cores is very high and the difficulties are more than the advantage of high efficiency of turbine generators. Super-critical reactors are now at the research stage and may possibly be realized in the future.

Thermal efficiency of NPPs is lower and the turbine size must be bigger in comparison with thermal power plants as discussed. That restricts the circumference speed of the turbine blades and the turbine rotations are kept to 1,500 rpm to l,800rpm which is half the rotations of thermal

NSRA, Japan

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