Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Coupled irradiation-thermal-mechanical analysis of the solid-state core in a heat pipe cooled reactor

  • Ma, Yugao (Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University) ;
  • Liu, Jiusong (Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China) ;
  • Yu, Hongxing (Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China) ;
  • Tian, Changqing (Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China) ;
  • Huang, Shanfang (Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University) ;
  • Deng, Jian (Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China) ;
  • Chai, Xiaoming (Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China) ;
  • Liu, Yu (Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China) ;
  • He, Xiaoqiang (Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China)
  • Received : 2021.05.27
  • Accepted : 2022.01.02
  • Published : 2022.06.25
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Abstract

The solid-state core of a heat pipe cooled reactor operates at high temperatures over 1000 K with thermal and irradiation-induced expansion during burnup. The expansion changes the gap thickness between the solid components and the material properties, and may even cause the gap closure, which then significantly influences the thermal and mechanical characteristics of the reactor core. This study developed an irradiation behavior model for HPRTRAN, a heat pipe reactor system analysis code, to introduce the irradiation effects such as swelling and creep. The megawatt heat pipe reactor MegaPower was chosen as an application case. The coupled irradiation-thermal-mechanical model was developed to simulate the irradiation effects on the heat transfer and stresses of the whole reactor core. The results show that the irradiation deformation effect is significant, with the irradiation-induced strains up to 2.82% for fuel and 0.30% for monolith at the end of the reactor lifetime. The peak temperatures during the lifetime are 1027:3 K for the fuel and 956:2 K for monolith. The gap closure enhances the heat transfer but caused high stresses exceeding the yield strength in the monolith.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 11975219, and the Scientific Research Program for Young Talent Elite Project of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC2019YTEP-NPIC01). The authors are also thankful for the support of the Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China.

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