Development of dynamic motion models of SPACE code for ocean nuclear reactor analysis

Abstract

Lately, ocean nuclear power plants have attracted attention as one of diverse uses of nuclear power plants. Because ocean nuclear power plants are movable or transportable, it is necessary to analyze the thermal hydraulics in a moving frame of reference, and computer codes have been developed to predict thermal hydraulics in large moving systems. The purpose of this study is to incorporate a three dimensional dynamic motion model into the SPACE code (Safety and Performance Analysis CodE) so that the code is able to analyze thermal hydraulics in an ocean nuclear power plant. A rotation system that describes three-dimensional rotations about an arbitrary axis was implemented, and modifications were made to the one-dimensional momentum equations to reflect the rectilinear and rotational acceleration effects. To demonstrate the code's ability to solve a problem utilizing a rotational frame of reference, code calculations were conducted on various conceptual problems in the two-dimensional and three-dimensional pipeline loops. In particular, the code results for the three-dimensional pipeline loop with a tilted rotation axis agreed well with the multi-dimensional CFD results.

Keywords

• Ocean nuclear reactor
• SPACE code
• Non-inertial frame of reference