Investigation of the Equivalent Test Condition for the Seismic Safety Assessment of a Spent Fuel Pool with regard to Sloshing Behavior

Abstract

Spent fuel pools are used as temporary storage for spent fuel assemblies in nuclear power plants and are filled with coolant which removes the decaying heat from spent fuel assemblies. Sloshing of the coolant can occur if an earthquake occurs in the area. It may produce additional forces on the pool or inner structure and cause overflow of the coolant. It is therefore critical to investigate the phenomenon of sloshing in a seismic assessment of the spent fuel pool. The size of an actual spent fuel pool is excessive for carrying out an experimental study; thus, a scale model is necessary for experimentation. In this study, a scaling law was defined for test conditions using a scale model to understand sloshing behavior, and the results were validated via computational fluid dynamic analysis. Because sloshing is resonant in a fluid and the first mode natural frequency of a fluid is dominant in sloshing behavior, the test condition could be obtained based on the natural frequency of the fluid. In the model, which is scaled with a factor of “Sf,” the scale factors “Sf,” “Sf0,” “Sf−0.5,” and “Sf0.5” were used for displacement, acceleration, excitation frequency, and excitation time, respectively. Approximately 5% difference in maximum sloshing height between two models was predicted in the only case that 1/8 and 1/4 models (1/8 and 1/4 scaled down from an actual spent fuel pool) were excited with 10 Hz and 7.071 Hz, respectively, but the same sloshing height and pressure were predicted in other cases. The results of this study support the idea that the Froude scaling law can be used when using a scale model for a seismic assessment of spent fuel pools to investigate sloshing behavior.