Indirect air cooling techniques for control rod drives in the high temperature engineering test reactor

The high temperature engineering test reactor (HTTR) is the first high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in Japan with reactor outlet gas temperature of 950 deg. C and thermal power of 30 MW. Sixteen pairs of control rods are employed for controlling the reactivity change of the HTTR. Each standpipe for a pair of the control rods, which is placed on the top head dome of the reactor pressure vessel, contains one control rod drive mechanism. The control rod drive mechanism may malfunction because of reduction of the electrical insulation of the electromagnetic clutch when the temperature exceeds 180 deg. C. Because 31 standpipes stand close together in the standpipe room, 16 standpipes for the control rods, which are located at the center, should be cooled effectively. Therefore, the control rod drives are cooled indirectly by forced air circulation through a pair of ring-ducts with proper air outlet nozzles and inlets. Based on analytical results, a pair of the ring-ducts was installed as one of structures in the standpipe room. Evaluation results through the rise-to-power test of the HTTR showed that temperatures of the electromagnetic clutch and the ambient helium gas inside the control rod standpipe should be below the limits of 180 and 75 deg. C, respectively, at full power operation and at the scram from the operation.