Study on Application of the Single-Curvature Polyhedron Hydro-Bulging Technology in Metallic Reactor Containment

Abstract The integral RPV configuration and layout nuclear reactors eliminate the loop piping and the externally located steam generators, pumps and pressurizer with their individual reactor pressure vessels. Hence, the footprint of the containment can be greatly reduced. This size reduction makes them possible to use small size and high pressure vessels as their containments. Compared with cylindrical pressure vessels, spherical vessels have the advantages of higher pressure bearing capacity and material saving. So for integral RPV configuration reactors, using spherical vessels as their containments and reactor building as a barrier to protect the containment from attack from aircraft is a promising configuration and layout plan. The traditional spherical vessel technology adopts presses and dies to form the steel sheet blanks into double-curvature orange petals, then to assemble and weld the petals to obtain a spherical vessel, the process is complicated, long production period and higher cost. The single-curvature polyhedron hydro-bulging technology to manufacture spherical vessel is a new technology for manufacture spherical vessels, which has been used to manufacture spherical vessels in many fields. But up to now, there is no case that the technology is used in the nuclear industry. This paper tries to explore the application of the single-curvature polyhedron hydro-bulging technology for manufacturing spherical vessel in manufacturing steel spherical containment vessel of the nuclear power plant.