Separate and integral effect tests for validation of cooling and operational performance of the APR+ passive auxiliary feedwater system

The passive auxiliary feedwater system (PAFS) is one of the advanced safety features adopted in the APR+, which is intended to completely replace the conventional active auxiliary feedwater system. With an aim of validating the cooling and operational performance of PAFS, an experimental program is in progress at KAERI, which is composed of two kinds of tests; the separate effect test and the integral effect test. The separate effect test, PASCAL (PAFS Condensing Heat Removal Assessment Loop), is being performed to experimentally investigate the condensation heat transfer and natural convection phenomena in PAFS. A single, nearly-horizontal U-tube, whose dimensions are the same as the prototypic U-tube of the APR+ PAFS, is simulated in the PASCAL test. The PASCAL experimental result showed that the present design of PAFS satisfied the heat removal requirement for cooling down the reactor core during the anticipated accident transients. The integral effect test is in progress to confirm the operational performance of PAFS, coupled with the reactor coolant systems using the ATLAS facility. As the first integral effect test, an FLB (feedwater line break) accident was simulated for the APR+. From the integral effect test result, it could be concluded that the APR+ has the capability of coping with the hypothetical FLB accident by adopting PAFS and proper set-points of its operation.