PX-Siphon Tube for an Unmanned Reactor Cooling

The heat transfer rate of pooling boiling is not so fast compared with spray jet cooling. Therefore a high heat flux mechanism has been studied for the decay heat cooling over several years. Through this work, an innovative feat cooling concept has been developed as the name of PX. As one of the research results, a new cooling mechanism of siphon tube is introduced in this paper. It is a unique concept that adopts both an ultimately fast heat transfer mechanism for a small containment to take advantage of the potential, thermal, and dynamic energy of the cold water in the containment effectively. A fast heat transfer mechanism for removing the decay heat was developed at KAERI. This innovative concept has unique characteristics of ultimate heat transfer mechanism. It can make the containment size small and ultimate long-term cooling possible. Additionally, this concept for a reactor cooling system has the distinguished ability of self-diagnosis operation for most accidents. With some additional optimized accident management, unmanned reactor operation will be possible in the near future