HTGR Knowledge Base

Conference Article: Transient analysis of water ingress into the HTR-10 high temperature gas cooled test reactor

Abstract

The high temperature gas-cooled test reactor HTR-10 is a graphite moderated and helium cooled reactor with a pebble bed core of spherical fuel elements. The primary system consists of reactor pressure vessel, steam generator vessel and hot gas duct vessel. The water ingress into HTR-10 reactor pressure vessel can occur for the accident of the rupture of the heat transfer tube of the steam generator. The mixture of helium and steam will enter the reactor with the stream. The transient behaviour of reactivity increase and graphite corrosion of both fuel elements and graphite structure caused by chemical reaction between graphite and steam are analyzed in order to evaluate the safety feature. The water ingress rate, reactivity increase, pressure and temperature transients in the primary system and graphite oxidation are analyzed by making use of the RETRAN code, THERMIX code and OXID-RE code. With the analytical results that the fuel element and graphite structure corrosion is not significant, the overpressurization of the reactor vessel is only for hypothetical accident.

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Reference:

Technical committee meeting on response of fuel, fuel elements and gas cooled reactor cores under accidental air or water ingress conditions. Beijing (China). 25-27 Oct 1993

International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)

IAEA-TECDOC--784, pp:92-96