Development of Model to Evaluate Thermal Fluid Flow Around a Submerged Transportation Cask of Spent Nuclear Fuel in the Deep Sea

Given the domestic situation, all nuclear power plants are located at the seaside, where interim storage sites are also likely to be located and maritime transportation is considered inevitable. Currently, Korea does not have an independently developed maritime transportation risk assessment code, and no research has been conducted to evaluate the release rate of radioactive waste from a submerged transportation cask in the sea. Therefore, secure technology is necessary to assess the impact of immersion accidents and establish a regulatory framework to assess, mitigate, and prevent maritime transportation accidents causing serious radiological consequences. The flow rate through a gap in a containment boundary should be calculated to determine the accurate release rate of radionuclides. The fluid flow through the micro-scale gap can be evaluated by combining the flow inside and outside the transportation cask. In this study, detailed computational fluid dynamic and simplified models are constructed to evaluate the internal flow in a transportation cask and to capture the flow and heat transfer around the transportation cask in the sea, respectively. In the future, fluid flow through the gap will be evaluated by coupling the models developed in this study.