Drop Time Evaluation for SMART Control Rod Assembly

The control rod assemblies do freely fall into the reactor core by the gravity from the control rod drive mechanism. In order to achieve a rapid shutdown and control the reactor power, it is required to insert control rod assemblies as soon as possible. In this paper, we evaluated the drop time and flow characteristics caused around guide tube for SMART(System-integrated modular advanced reactor) control rod assembly. Numerical analyses are carried out with FLUENT program of computational fluid dynamics. This study results show that the drop time of the control rod assembly in the operating condition of SMART is more 20 percent rapidly than the drop time of the room temperature and ambient atmosphere condition.