Preliminary Design of Compressor Impeller for innovative Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor

For nuclear power plant application, applying S-CO₂ Brayton cycle to Sodium cooled Fast Reactors and Small Modular Reactors are currently considered and active research is being performed by various research institutions and universities. As a part of research activities on the SCO₂ Brayton cycle development for a nuclear power system, KAIST joint research team is currently working on an innovative Sodium cooled Fast Reactor (iSFR) development which utilizes S-CO₂ Brayton cycle as its power conversion system. Various research subjects including reactor physics, thermo-hydraulics, material, cycle analysis and system integration are being considered as research issues currently. However, technical issues rising from dramatic change of thermodynamic property of CO₂ near the critical point still remain as problems to be solved. As a result, 3D impeller model generation based on 1D mean stream line analysis results was successfully performed for non-airfoil blades. Since 3D model generation module works successfully, KAIST_TMD can support 3D CFD analysis for internal flow structure in the designed impeller. Compressor loss mechanisms are complex phenomena and these are difficulties to be modeled while considering each loss mechanism separately