Title: Thermal-hydraulic studies of a transmutation advanced device for sustainable energy applications

Authors: Leorlen Yunier Rojas; Laura García; Carlos Rafael García; Facundo Alberto Escrivá; Carlos Alberto Brayner

Addresses: Instituto Superior de Tecnologías y Ciencias Aplicadas (InSTEC), Av. Salvador Allende y Luaces, La Habana 10400, Cuba ' Technology Department, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland ' Instituto Superior de Tecnologías y Ciencias Aplicadas (InSTEC), Av. Salvador Allende y Luaces, La Habana 10400, Cuba ' Instituto de Ingeniería Energética (IIE), Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV), Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain ' Departamento de Energía Nuclear, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), Av. Luiz Freire 1000, Cid. Universitaria, Recife, Brazil

Abstract: The Transmutation Advanced Device for Sustainable Energy Applications (TADSEA) is a pebble-bed Accelerator Driven System (ADS) with a graphite-gas configuration, designed for nuclear waste transmutation and obtaining heat at very high temperatures to produce hydrogen. In previous thermal-hydraulic studies of the TADSEA using a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code, the pebble-bed reactor core was considered as a porous medium. In this paper, the heat transfer from the fuel elements to the coolant was analysed for three core states during normal operation. The heat transfer inside the spherical fuel elements was also studied. Three critical fuel elements groups were defined regarding their position inside the core. Results were compared with a realistic CFD model of the critical fuel elements groups. During the steady state, no critical elements reached the limit temperature of this type of fuel. Two transients were also studied with reduced coolant mass flow and loss of forced reactor cooling without shutdown.

Keywords: accelerator driven systems; very high temperature reactors; pebble-bed reactors; nuclear thermal-hydraulics; CFD; computational fluid dynamics; sustainable energy; graphite-gas configuration; nuclear waste transmutation; nuclear energy; nuclear power; heat transfer.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNEST.2015.075484

International Journal of Nuclear Energy Science and Technology, 2015 Vol.9 No.4, pp.293 - 318

Received: 16 Sep 2015
Accepted: 04 Dec 2015

Published online: 24 Mar 2016 *

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