Design Features of the Separate Effect Test Facility for a Forced-Draft Sodium-to-Air Heat Exchanger (FHX) with Helical Finned Tubes

A sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) is one of the most promising options to pursue these purposes, and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) is currently developing a PGSFR (Prototype Gen-IV Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor) with a pool-type reactor vessel. Among the many components in an SFR, a decay heat removal system (DHRS) is very important for a safety of nuclear power plants. The PGSFR adopted two different kinds of DHRS: an active and passive DHRS, and the decay heat from the primary sodium pool is moved to the two kinds of sodium-to-air heat exchangers as ultimate heat sinks through sodium-to-sodium decay heat exchangers (DHX). To verify the cooling performances and thermal-hydraulic characteristics of this type of heat exchanger, a separate effect sodium test facility named as SELFA (Sodium thermal-hydraulic Experiment Loop for Finned-tube sodium-to-Air heat exchanger) is being developed. The purposes of SELFA are verification and validation of the design code for FHX. For this, scales and configurations of SELFA are carefully defined as similarity with the FHX in the PGSFR. In this paper, we propose the key design features of SELFA including the model FHX (M-FHX) unit. To verify and validate a design code of the FHX in PGSFR, a separate effect test facility called as SELFA has being developed in KAERI