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Two steps forward for U.K. advanced nuclear
This week, two significant announcements have emerged from the United Kingdom’s advanced reactor sector.
On June 14, Rolls-Royce, the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that they had signed two trilateral memorandums of cooperation to collaborate on “advanced modular reactor (AMR) technology, specifically high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), and the coated particle fuel these reactors will use.”
Separately, on June 16, Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower announced that its Natrium reactor design has been formally submitted for U.K. regulatory review. The company also announced the formation of a new subsidiary, TerraPower UK Ltd.
Yiyang Zhang, Zhu Fang, Xinxin Wu, Haitao Wang, Libin Sun, Xiaowei Luo, Xiaowei Li (Tsinghua Univ)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 84-93
The graphite dust, produced by friction of fuel pebbles, is a significant concern in potential accidents of HTGR because the graphite dust is closely coupled with radioactive fission product. The study of graphite particle-wall impaction is important to accurately estimate deposition rate of graphite dust. In this paper, both the spherical and non-spherical particle-wall impaction process are discussed based on FEM. By combining derived adhesion force with FEM, the results agree well with JKR model. The damping dissipation is employed to describe the energy loss, corresponding dimensionless damping coefficient is defined to establish the relation between damping coefficient and material properties. Meanwhile, the results of non-spherical particle impaction are also well predicted by dimensionless damping coefficient. It is also shown both adhesion force and damping dissipation are important at low incident velocity, while the effect of adhesion force is negligible and the dissipation is the dominant mechanism at high incident velocity. Besides, the contact area remains perfectly elastic deformation and never gets into failure when the incident velocity is lower than 20 m/s due to size effect. The results provide a possible approach for non-spherical particle-wall impaction, which can be combined with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to estimate the deposition rate of graphite dust in HTGR.