PDC Modifications for Analysis of Gas-Cooled Reactors with Direct Helium Brayton Cycle
Capabilities of the Plant Dynamics Code (PDC) have been extended to allow steady-state and transient simulation of graphite-cooled reactors with direct helium Brayton cycle. On the cycle side, the most significant code modification is the addition of helium properties, in the format required by the code’s equations. Since the code was already formulated to handle more complex real gas properties, adding helium as working fluid that behaves like ideal gas was fairly straightforward. A reactor module was added to PDC to simulate a reactor cooled by the working fluid of the Brayton cycle. Two options are supported: channel type, typical for graphite gas-cooled reactors, and pin type, typical for light-water and liquid metal-cooled reactors. The reactor module is an extension of the electrical heater model and simulates heat deposition in the fuel and transfer of this heat from the fuel to the coolant through the matrix and tube materials. The new reactor module becomes the third option in PDC for modeling heat addition to the cycle, besides previously modeled heat addition heat exchanger and electrical heater. In addition to those changes, other minor code modifications and improvements were introduced during the work of expanding PDC to modeling of gas-cooled reactors. These modifications are summarized in the last chapter of this report.