ME 5129 - Principles of Thermal Energy Conversion

Lecture - XXII
Introduction to nuclear power reactors

Prof. Sarit Kumar Das

Institute Professor
Heat Transfer &Thermal Power Lab.
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute Of Technology Madras

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skdas@iitm.ac.in
 CANDU(CANandian Deuterium Uranium) Reactor
 The CANDU, utilizes natural uranium as a fuel and heavy water as a
moderator and coolant.

1. Fuel bundle 7. Heavy-water pump

2. Calandria (reactor core) 8. Fueling machines
3. Adjuster rods 9. Heavy-water moderator
4. Heavy-water pressure reservoir 10. Pressure tube
5. Steam generator 11. Steam going to steam turbine
6. Light-water pump 12. Cold water returning from turbine

13. Containment building made of reinforced concrete

 A horizontal calandria reactor vessel, fuel elements containing natural UO2 and housed in pressure tubes, which
also carry the pressurized D2O coolant.
 It also consists of cool D2O moderator on the shell side.
 The calandria contains 390 horizontal pressure tubes.
 The calandria and coolant tubes are separated by a sealed
annulus containing CO2 or N2.
 Below the calandria is a dump tank with a heavy aggregate
concrete vault to provide shielding from reactor radiation.
 The dump tank contains a helium atmosphere.
 Indian Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (IPHWR-700)
 Indian pressurized heavy-water reactor designed by the Bhabha
Atomic Research Centre. It is a Generation III reactor developed
from earlier CANDU based 220 MW and 540 MW designs. It can
generate 700 MW of electricity.
 IPHWR-700 uses heavy water (deuterium oxide, D2O) as
its coolant and neutron moderator. The design retains the
features of other standardized Indian PHWR units, which include:
• Two diverse and fast acting shutdown systems
• Double containment of reactor building
• A water filled calandria vault & an integral calandria - end shield
• Zr-2.5% Nb pressure tubes separated from calandria tubes
• A calandria tube filled with carbon dioxide (which is The reactor has less excess reactivity. Therefore,
it does not need neutron poison inside the fuel or
recirculated) to monitor pressure tube leak.
moderator. These designs handle the case of a
Features loss of coolant accident such as occurred in
 Partial boiling at the coolant channel outlet the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
 Interleaving of primary heat transport system feeders  A containment spray system
 A system to remove passive decay heat  A mobile fuel transfer machine
 Regional protection from over power  A steel lined containment wal
 Fast-Breeder Reactors
 No attempt is made to thermalize or
slow down neutrons in the fast
breeder reactor (liquid metal
cooled); therefore, an insignificant
number of neutrons exist in the
thermal range.
 For the thermal reactor (water
moderated), the spectrum of
neutrons in the fast region (> 0.1
MeV) has a shape similar to that
for the spectrum of neutrons
emitted by the fission process.
The core of a fast breeder reactor consists of two parts.
 The fuel rods, which contain a mixture of uranium dioxide and plutonium
dioxide, are found in the inner part.
 Here fission reactions dominate, while in the outer part the predominant
process is conversion of U-238 to Pu-239.
 This part contains depleted uranium (i.e. uranium, in which the U-235 content is
even lower than the natural 0.7%).
 In such a reactor one can achieve that more fissile plutonium nuclei be produced in a unit time than the number of
fissile nuclei which undergo fission (hence the name "breeder").
 On the other hand, neutrons are not thermalized, since fast neutrons are needed for the above described processes.
 Fast-Breeder(Liquid Metal Cooled) Reactors

 The coolant is a liquid metal, usually sodium.

 Heat is transferred from primary to secondary sodium
and secondary sodium to water.
 Heavy pressure vessels arenot required.
 High temperatures can be achieved, which improves
efficiency.
 Fast neutrons participate in fission reaction.
 No moderator required.
 Surplus neutrons used to convert non-fissile material into
fissile fuel, called breeding.
 Fusion Power Reactors
 Fusion power plant or thermonuclear reactor, a device to produce
electrical power from the energy released in a nuclear fusion reaction.
The use of nuclear fusion reactions for electricity generation remains
theoretical.
 Deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion requires the nuclei to have lower
kinetic energy than is needed for the fusion of more highly charged,
heavier nuclei.
 The two products of the reaction are an alpha particle (the nucleus of
a helium) at an energy of 3.5 MeV and a neutron at 14.1 MeV.
 The neutron, lacking electric charge, is not affected by electric or
magnetic fields and can escape the plasma to deposit its energy in a
surrounding material, such as lithium.
 The heat generated in the lithium “blanket” can then be converted to electrical energy by conventional
means, such as steam-driven turbines.
 The electrically charged alpha particles, meanwhile, collide with the deuterons and tritons (by their
electrical interaction) and can be magnetically confined within the plasma, thereby transferring their
energy to the reacting nuclei.
 When this redeposition of the fusion energy into the plasma exceeds the power lost from the plasma, the
plasma will be self-sustaining, or “ignited.”
 Boiling Water Reactor(BWR)
 Overall mass balance in the reactor core is given as, 𝑚𝑖 = 𝑚𝑔 + 𝑚𝑓
 The average exit quality (𝑥𝑒 ), quality of all the vapour-liquid mixture at the
exit, is given by,

𝑚𝑔 𝑚𝑔
𝑥𝑒 = =
𝑚𝑖 𝑚𝑔 + 𝑚𝑓
 The recirculation ratio (R) is the ratio of recirculation liquid to vapour
produced. It is given by,

𝑚𝑓 1 − 𝑥𝑒
𝑅= =
𝑚𝑔 𝑥𝑒
 Heat balance equation, 𝑚𝑖 ℎ𝑖 = 𝑚𝑓 ℎ𝑓 + 𝑚𝑔 ℎ𝑔
 Where, ℎ𝑖 is the specific enthalpy of the liquid at the reactor – core inlet.
𝒉𝒇 −𝒉𝒊
ℎ𝑖 = (1 − 𝑥𝑒 )ℎ𝑓 + 𝑥𝑒 ℎ𝑔 𝒙𝒆 = 𝒉𝒇 −𝒉𝒈
 The condition of the liquid entering the bottom of the core is given by the
enthalpy of sub cooling,
△𝒉𝒔𝒖𝒃 = 𝒉𝒇 − 𝒉𝒊 = 𝒙𝒆 (𝒉𝒇 − 𝒉𝒈 )
 Three Mile island (1979)
 The accident began with failures in the non-nuclear secondary system followed
by a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve (PORV) in the primary system that
allowed large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant to escape.
 The mechanical failures were compounded by the initial failure of plant
operators to recognize the situation as a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA).
 During the event, these inadequacies were compounded by design flaws,
including a cacophony of alarms, an inconvenient arrangement of instruments
and controls, and the absence of clear indicators for coolant inventory or the
position of the stuck open PORV.
 The accident crystallized anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the
general public and resulted in new regulations for the nuclear industry. It has
been cited as a contributor to the decline of a new reactor construction
program, a slowdown that was already underway in the 1970s.
 The partial meltdown resulted in the release of radioactive gases and
radioactive iodine into the environment.
 Chernobyl (1986)
 The accident occurred during a safety test on the steam turbine of a high-
power channel-type nuclear reactor (RBMK). During the planned decrease of
reactor power in preparation for the electrical test, the power unexpectedly
dropped to a near-zero level.
 The operators were unable to fully restore the power level specified by the
test program, which put the reactor in an unstable condition. This risk was
not made evident in the operating instructions, so the operators proceeded
with the test.
 Upon test completion, the operators triggered a reactor shutdown, but a
combination of unstable conditions and reactor design flaws caused an
uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction instead.

 A large amount of energy was suddenly released, and two or more explosions ruptured the reactor core and
destroyed the reactor building.
• One was a highly destructive steam explosion from the vaporizing super-heated cooling water;
• the other explosion could have been another steam explosion, a hydrogen deflagration, or a small
nuclear explosion
 Fukushima Daiichi (2011)
 The accident was triggered by the earthquake and tsunami.
 On detecting the earthquake, the active reactors automatically shut
down their normal power-generating fission reactions. Because of these
shutdowns and other electrical grid supply problems, the reactors'
electricity supply failed, and their emergency diesel generators
automatically started.
 Critically, these were required to provide electrical power to the pumps
that circulated coolant through the reactors' cores. This continued
circulation was vital to remove residual decay heat, which continues to
be produced after fission has ceased.
 However, the earthquake had also generated a tsunami 14 metres
(46 ft) high that arrived shortly afterwards and swept over the plant's
seawall and then flooded the lower parts of reactors 1–4. This flooding
caused the failure of the emergency generators and loss of power to the
circulating pumps.
 The resultant loss of reactor core cooling led to three nuclear meltdowns, three hydrogen explosions, and
the release of radioactive contamination in Units 1, 2 and 3.
 Large amounts of water contaminated with radioactive isotopes were released into the Pacific
Ocean during and after the disaster.
 Nuclear Power Plants In India
Total capacity
Power station Type Units
(MW)
Kaiga IPHWR-220 220 × 4 880
Kakrapar IPHWR-220 220 × 2 1140
Kudankulam VVER-1000 1000 × 2 2,000
Chennai (Kalpakkam) IPHWR-220 220 × 2 440
Narora IPHWR-220 220 × 2 440
CANDU 100 × 1
Rajasthan CANDU 200 x 1 1,180
IPHWR-220 220 × 4
BWR 160 x 2
Tarapur 1,400
IPHWR-540 540 × 2
Total 6,780

Total Expected
Power station Type Units capacity Commercial
(MW) Operation
Chennai (Kalpakkam) PFBR 500 × 1 500 2022
Kakrapar Unit 4 IPHWR-700 700 × 1 700 2022
Gorakhpur IPHWR-700 700 × 2 1,400 2025
Rajasthan Unit 7 and 8 IPHWR-700 700 × 2 1,400 2022
Kudankulam Unit 3, 4, & 5 VVER-1000 1000 × 3 3,000 2025-2027
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