Initial Demonstration of New Griffin Capability for Simulating the Running-In Phase of Pebble-Bed Reactors with Multiphysics

Conference · Mon Apr 22 04:00:00 EDT 2024

DOI:https://doi.org/10.13182/PHYSOR24-43685· OSTI ID:2458157

Hanophy, Joshua Thomas ^[1]; Wang, Yaqi ^[1]; Ortensi, Javier ^[1]; Balestra, Paolo ^[1]

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1. Idaho National Laboratory

Griffin, a MOOSE (Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment) based application targeting transient modelling of advanced reactors, has been used recently to model pebble-bed reactors (PBRs). The modelling effort has focused thus far on modelling the equilibrium core. A new capability to simulate the running-in phase of PBR operation has been added to Griffin. This work demonstrates the newcapability with a sample multiphysics running-in simulation. The basic features of the new running-in capability were documented previously; however, the sample simulation results presented there did not include multiphysics; the fuel temperatures were assumed to be constant. In this work, Griffin computes power densities in the core at each timestep of the running-in simulation and passes these to Pronghorn which models fluid flow and heat transfer to calculate temperatures that are passed back to Griffin and accounted for with temperature dependent cross-sections.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: 58
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 2458157
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-23-75540-Rev000
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
Pebble Bed Reactor