Flow Mixing Inside a Control-Rod Guide Tube : Part 2—Experimental Tests and CFD-Simulations

• Alarge number of control rod cracks were detected during therefuelling outage of the twin reactors Oskarshamn 3 and Forsmark3 in the fall of 2008. The extensive damage investigationfinally lead to the restart of both reactors at theend of 2008 under the condition that further studies wouldbe conducted in order to clarify all remaining matters. Also,all control rods were inserted 14% in order to locatethe welding region of the control rod stem away fromthe thermal mixing region of the flow. Unfortunately, this measureled to new cracks a few months later due toa combination of surface finish of the new stems andthe changed flow conditions after the partial insertion of thecontrol rods. The experimental evidence reported here shows an increasein the extension of the mixing region and in theintensity of the thermal fluctuations. As a part of thecomplementary work associated with the restart of the reactors, andto verify the CFD simulations, experimental work of the flowin the annular region formed by the guide tube andcontrol rod stem was carried out. Two full-scale setups weredeveloped, one in a Plexiglass model at atmospheric conditions (inorder to be able to visualize the mixing process) andone in a steel model to allow for a highertemperature difference and heating of the control rod guide tube.The experimental results corroborate the general information obtained through CFDsimulations, namely that the mixing region between the cold crud-removalflow and warm by-pass flow is perturbed by flow structurescoming from above. The process is characterized by low frequent,high amplitude temperature fluctuations. The process is basically hydrodynamic, causedby the downward transport of flow structures originated at theupper bypass inlets. The damping thermal effects through buoyancy isof secondary importance, as also the scaling analysis shows, howevera slight damping of the temperature fluctuations can be seendue to natural convection due to a pre-heating of thecold crud-removal flow. The comparison between numerical and experimental resultsshows a rather good agreement, indicating that experiments with plantconditions are not necessary since, through the existing scaling lawsand CFD-calculations, the obtained results may be extrapolated to plantconditions. The problem of conjugate heat transfer has not yetbeen addressed experimentally since complex and difficult measurements of theheat transfer have to be carried out. This type ofmeasurements constitutes one of the main challenges to be dealtwith in the future work.

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TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Energiteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Energy Engineering (hsv//eng)

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