Use of a commercial heat transfer code to predict horizontally oriented spent fuel rod surface temperatures
- Gram, Inc., Albuquerque, NM (US)
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (US)
Radioactive spent fuel assemblies are a source of hazardous waste that will have to be dealt with in the near future. It is anticipated that the spent fuel assemblies will be transported to disposal sites in spent fuel transportation casks. In order to design a reliable and safe transportation cask, the maximum cladding temperature of the spent fuel rod arrays must be calculated. A comparison between numerical calculations using commercial thermal analysis software packages and experimental data simulating a horizontally oriented spent fuel rod array was performed. Twelve cases were analyzed using air and helium for the fill gas, with three different heat dissipation levels. The numerically predicted temperatures are higher than the experimental data for all levels of heat dissipation with air as the fill gas. The temperature differences are 4{degree}C and 23{degree}C for the low heat dissipation and high heat dissipation, respectively. The temperature predictions using helium as a fill gas are lower for the low and medium heat dissipation levels, but higher at the high heat dissipation. The temperature differences are 1{degree}C and 6{degree}C for the low and medium heat dissipation, respectively. For the high heat dissipation level, the temperature predictions are 16{degree}C higher than the experimental data. Differences between the predicted and experimental temperatures can be attributed to several factors. These factors include experimental uncertainty in the temperature and heat dissipation measurements, actual convection effects not included in the model, and axial heat flow in the experimental data. This work demonstrates that horizontally oriented spent fuel rod surface temperature predictions can be made using existing commercial software packages. This work also shows that end effects will be increasingly important as the amount of dissipated heat increases.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-76DP00789
- OSTI ID:
- 10175662
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-92-2401; TTC-1239; ON: DE93018513; TRN: 93:018193
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Mar 1993
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
SPENT FUEL CASKS
DESIGN
SPENT FUEL ELEMENTS
THERMAL ANALYSIS
HEAT TRANSFER
AMBIENT TEMPERATURE
COVER GAS
TEMPERATURE GRADIENTS
FORECASTING
P CODES
Q CODES
FINITE DIFFERENCE METHOD
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
STEADY-STATE CONDITIONS
EMISSIVITY
SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
420204
SHIPPING CONTAINERS