Management System Activities of the Operation and Utilization of GHARR-1

The Ghana Research Reactor-1 (GHARR-1) is a 34 kW low enriched uranium (LEU) Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR), tank-in-pool type and cooled by natural circulation under atmospheric pressure operating conditions. GHARR-1 is owned by Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) and operated by National Nuclear Research Institute (NNRI), one of the institutes of GAEC. GHARR-1 is housed by Nuclear Reactors Research Centre (NRRC), one of the Centres of NNRI. Management/Administration, Radiation protection, Reactor operation and maintenance, Reactor utilization and Physical protection are the various systems/units that integrate to manage the activities of operation and utilization of GHARR-1 in addition to the quality assurance and quality control management system of the research reactor facility. The GHARR-1 which is currently in operation follows a robust maintenance culture adopted by the management system and this has made it possible to keep the reactor in operation with minimal interruption. The management system activities adopted at the Centre to ensure safety of the workers, public and the research reactor facility include authorization of the operation of the reactor for any experiments/modifications;providing material and financial resources for maintaining the research reactor facility;following standard procedures while carrying out Neutron Activation Analysis;participation in IAEA proficiency test;irradiation sites/positions characterization;following standard procedures while carrying out reactor operation and maintenance including reactor and pool water purification and other related activities;monitoring radiation levels in the controlled, supervised and uncontrolled areas of the research reactor facility as well as during reactor operation and maintenance;controlling the physical entry of the workers and public into the research reactor facility;and ensuring that the security structures provided to protect the reactor facility are functioning properly. The thorough knowledge on the functions of the various components that make up the electrical/electronic and control systems of the reactor has been observed to be important for continuous successful maintenance of the research reactor to keep the reactor in operation. This work provides some management system activities adopted to monitor the activities of the research reactor operation and utilization to guarantee safety of workers, public and the environment as well as to safeguard a continuous operation of the research reactor. These management system activities adopted among others, are in the form of Monitoring Forms provided for monitoring the activities of the research reactor operation and utilization in order to ensure standard procedures and specifications are followed and quality services are rendered to the public.

Investigating the Effects of Interface Topology on Flow Development in Rod Bundle Supported by Spacer Grid with Split Mixing Vane Using STAR-CCM+

Flow development downstream of a spacer grid is dependent on the upstream conditions and the imposed interface topology, especially at inlet and outlet boundaries. In STAR-CCM+, all interfaces fall into two groups, direct and indirect. A direct interface directly joins together two boundaries composing the interface either permanently or temporarily, for the case of rigid body motion. An explicit connection is created between cells on each side of the interface, so that mass and energy or either of them will occur across the interface. Three options of interface topology namely, in-place, periodic and repeating are available to be imposed at the inlet-outlet boundaries for a flow problem. In the present work, computational fluid dynamic simulation using STAR-CCM+ was performed for the flow of water at a bundle’s Reynolds number of Re1 = 3.4 × 104 through a 5 × 5 rod bundle geometry supported by spacer grid with and without split mixing vanes for which the rod-to-rod pitch to diameter ratio was 1.33 and the rod to wall pitch to diameter ratio was 0.74. The two-layer k-epsilon turbulence model with an all y+ automatic wall treatment function in STAR-CCM+ was adopted for an isothermal single phase (water) flow through the geometry with and without imposed cyclic periodic interface boundary condition of fully developed flow type at inlet and outlet boundaries. The objectives were to primarily investigate the extent of predictability of the experimental data by the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation as a measure of reliability on the CFD code employed, and also study the effects of the imposed interface topology on flow redistribution in the presence and absence of split mixing vane. Validation of simulation results with experimental data showed a good correlation of mean flow parameters with experimental data. Generally, the agreement of simulation results with data obtained from the experimental investigation confirmed the suitability of the CFD code, STAR-CCM+ to analyze the physical problem considered. Trends of flow redistribution downstream of the spacer grid indicate that, the split mixing vanes acted to quickly bring the flow to an equitable redistribution downstream of the spacer grid irrespective of the imposed inlet-outlet interface topology. For the case of the spacer grid without mixing vanes, some extents of deviation were realized between the model with no imposed interface topology and that with imposed periodic interface topology. The variation in trends shows that, a much longer inlet segment of the domain is required to completely nullify the effect of the inlet-outlet interface topology on flow distribution in the absence of mixing vanes which may lead to a relatively higher demand for computational resources than required in the presence of mixing vanes.

Performance of Heat Transfer Correlations Adopted at Supercritical Pressures: A Review

Research activities involving heat transfer at supercritical pressures have attracted attention in recent years because of possibility of increase in thermal output of heat transfer and industrial equipment. Because of high pressure and temperature conditions associated with heat transfer at supercritical pressures, only few experimental heat transfer studies are being carried out at supercritical conditions. The use of numerical tools for heat transfer and other related studies at supercritical pressures is increasing because of the high-pressure-temperature limitation of experimental studies at supercritical conditions. Heat transfer correlations implemented in these numerical tools are used to obtain numerical heat transfer data to complement experimental heat transfer data provided through experimental studies. In order to further broaden the understanding of fluid flow and heat transfer, this review examines the performance of heat transfer correlations adopted at supercritical pressures. It is found from the review that most of the correlations could predict heat transfer quite well in the low enthalpy region and few of the correlations could predict heat transfer in the high enthalpy region near critical and pseudo-critical conditions (heat transfer deteriorated conditions). However, no single heat transfer correlation is able to accurately predict all the experimental results presented in this work.

Flow Instability in Parallel Channels with Water at Supercritical Pressure: A Review

Research into flow instability at both subcritical and supercritical pressures has attracted attention in recent years because of its potential of occurrence in industrial heat transfer systems. Flow instability has the potential to affect the safety of design and operation of heat transfer equipment. Flow instability is therefore undesirable and should be avoided?in the design and operation of industrial equipment. Rahman?et al. reviewed studies on supercritical water heat transfer with the aim of providing references for SCWR researchers. It was found out that most of the CFD studies and experimental studies were performed with single tube geometry due to the complexity of parallel channel geometry. Because studies performed with parallel channel geometry could provide detailed information to the design of the SCWR core, they called for more studies in parallel channel geometry at supercritical pressures in the future. In order to help understand how flow instability investigations are carried out and also highlight the need to understand flow instability phenomenon and equip the designers and operators of industrial heat transfer equipment with the needed knowledge on flow instability, this study carried out a review of flow instability in parallel channels with water at supercritical pressures.