Safety of spent fuel pools: Contribution to multi-scale CFD modelling
The Fukushima accident has demonstrated the importance of investigating safety issues of the pools where spent nuclear fuel is stored until its activity has decreased sufficiently to permit long-term storage.
Up to now, fluid flow and heat transfer in a fuel assembly have mostly been investigated under operating conditions and under conditions of an incident in the reactor. However, the situation of an incident in a spent fuel pool leads to entirely different and insufficiently investigated conditions. These are characterized by reduced decay heat, low heat removal, high temperatures and dominance of thermal radiation and mixed convection. The purpose of the collaborative project SINABEL is the physical analysis of flow and heat transfer under these specific conditions.
Fuel assembly in crossflow under the conditions of an evaporating spent fuel pool. Streamlines of instantaneous flow and contours of the temperature in the fuel assembly.
The work at ISM is devoted to the scale of the fuel element assembling the individual rods and its interaction with the large-scale flow in the containment. In particular the intrusion of cold outer flow inte the upper end of the fuel element is addressed, as well as the effect at smaller length scales which have to be modelled. Validation of the generated models is performed with experimental data from the project partners.
| Cooperation |
Chair of Hydrogen and Nuclear Energy, TU Dresden |
| Project | SINABEL |
| Funding |
BMBF (02NUK027B) |
| Contact |