Following the alarming catastrophic Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, there has been a sudden upsurge of concerns related to the inherent safety of nuclear reactors. On the basis of the con- ventional pressurized water reactor (PWR), the generation III advanced nuclear reactor AP1000 has dramatically improved its inherent safety features by adopting the concept of passive safety system (Sutharshan et al., 2011). However, the AP1000 does not have passive cooling system for the spent fuel pool (SFP). Thus far, previous studies on SFP have mainly focused on the safety evaluations, with limited attentions on the improvements of effective cooling system of SFP. In the wake of Fukushima accident, there has been increased research interest on the design of passive cool- ing system for SFP. From the safety perspectives of SFP, it would be ideal to have a separate type heat pipe for cooling. For example, the evaporation section of the heat pipe can be placed around the pool, while the condensation section that is cooled by air under natural convection heat transfer can be installed outside the auxiliary building. The heat source in the pool is the water, which is at a temperature of around 60–90 C, whereas the heat sink is the envi- ronmental air, which is at a temperature of around 10–35 C (Ye et al., 2013). Obviously, the minimum temperature difference between the pool water and the surrounding air is of the order of 25 C. Accordingly, the temperature difference between the heat pipe and heat source can be much smaller, making the heat pipe work in low flux
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..