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A closer look at the initial NLIC selections—Part 2
In January, the Department of Energy announced its new Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus (NLIC) program, inviting states via a request for information to express their interest in hosting a facility supporting work from the front to the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle.
By April, 26 states had expressed interest in hosting such a facility. At the end of July, the DOE signed memorandums of understanding with five states—Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah—to more closely explore the possibilities of state-federal partnerships. These MOUs are not firm commitments from either the federal or state governments. Time will tell which—if any—of the five states develop projects through the program. In the meantime, today, we are taking a close look at what Utah, Idaho, Tennessee can offer in terms of a preexisting nuclear sector that could support new fuel cycle developments.
Ketan Ajay, Ravi Kumar, Akhilesh Gupta
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 1 | January 2022 | Pages 75-97
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.1945393
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The postulated dual-failure accident, i.e., loss of primary coolant flow along with impairment of the emergency coolant injection system, leads to peak fuel temperatures. It is well known that the temperature of the fuel assemblies is one of the significant factors that affect the outcome of an accident. Therefore, the present work aims to thoroughly investigate the thermal response of a single channel under postulated accident conditions. An experimental system was developed to capture the steady-state heat and temperature distribution in a representative 37-element fuel channel for a decay heat of 6.13 kW. Ohmic heating of the fuel rod simulators (FRSs) mimicked the generation of radioactive decay heat. Numerical simulation was also performed using the Fluent 19.1® code, and the discrete ordinates method was used to solve the radiative transfer equation. Based on the experimental results and the simulation results, it was found that the maximum Zircaloy-4 cladding temperature ≈850°C to 870°C was in the center ring. The temperature was found to vary around the circumference for each of the FRSs. Furthermore, the outer ring FRSs that had the lowest temperature developed the highest circumferential temperature gradient. In the pressure tube, the average circumferential temperature gradient obtained from the experiment and the simulation was 3.76°C/radian and 3.85°C/radian, respectively. Between the calandria tube and the moderator, the heat transfer coefficient was estimated to be around 822.3 W/m2‧K.