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Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
Takehiko Yokomine
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 2 | August 2011 | Pages 840-844
Computational Tools, Modeling & Validation | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12491
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The thermal properties of the pebble beds have a significant impact on the temperature profile of the Helium Cooled Pebble Bed blanket and the extraction of heat from the pebble beds to the coolant. The effective thermal conductivity of pebble bed has been modeled as the isotropic one. However, the isotropic thermal conductivity inherently can be achieved only the case with perfectly isotropic arrangement which is difficult to realized in the actual blanket device. In this paper, the relation between effective thermal conductivity tensor and fabric tensor in 2D pebble bed is investigated experimentally. It is cleared that the effective thermal conductivity tensor is proportional to the structural anisotropic tensor. And, the anisotropic feature is quite different between core region and near wall region, so that it is suggested that modeling of the effective thermal conductivity tensor of the pebble bed should be separately carried out at least in above two regions.