Design of large-scale sodium thermal-hydraulic integral effect test facility, STELLA-2

Abstract

The STELLA program was launched to support the PGSFR development in 2012 and for the 2nd stage, the STELLA-2 facility was designed to investigate the integral effect of safety systems including the comprehensive interaction among PHTS, IHTS and DHRS. In STELLA-2, the long-term transient behavior after accidents can be observed and the overall safety aspect can also be evaluated. In this paper, the basic design concept from engineering basis to specific design is described. The design was aimed to meet similarity criteria and requirements based on various non-dimensional numbers and the result satisfied the key features to explain the reasoning of safety evaluation. The result of this study was used to construct the facility and the experiment is on-going. In general, the final design meets the similarity criteria of the multi-dimensional physics inside the reactor pool. And also, for the conservation of natural circulation phenomena, the design meets the similarity requirements of geometry and thermo-dynamic behavior.

Keywords

• Large-scale sodium facility
• Integral effect test(IET)
• STELLA
• PGSFR