Temperature evaluation of an instrumented capsule after material irradiation tests in HANARO

An instrumented capsule has been used for an irradiation test of various nuclear materials in the research reactor, HANARO. The capsule is designed to have a standard 4-hole structure for the economical test of an RPV material at 290 ± 10 °C. The temperature of the specimens for the reactor powers, 0–24 MW, is measured by 12 thermocouples, and finite element (FE) analyses are also performed to compare and verify the irradiation test results. As a result of the tests and analyses, the maximum temperature at the reactor power of 24 MW is 256 °C for an irradiation test and 202.6 °C for an FE analysis at Stage 3 of the capsule. Also, for each stage of the capsule, the temperature difference of the specimen in the axial direction is very small to within 10 °C. It is expected that the results presented in this paper will be useful when designing the instrumented capsules for an irradiation test.