skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Update to advanced neutron source steady-state thermal-hydraulic report

Abstract

This report is intended to be a supplement to ORNL/TM-12398, Steady-State Thermal-Hydraulic Design Analysis of the Advanced Neutron Source Reactor. It updates the core thermal-hydrualic design to the latest three-element configuration and also provides the most recent information on the thermal-hydraulic statistical uncertainty analysis. In addition, it includes calculations of beam tube cooling and control rod lift forces, which were not addressed in the initial report. This report describes work that is a snapshot in time as it stood at the end of the project. The three-element core calculations include a description of changes made to the overall coolant system; however, most of the analysis is focused on fuel loading thermal-hydraulic calculations. This analysis uses updated uncertainty values and indicates that a two-dimensional fuel grading in the three-element core would still be necessary to meet the desired operating and safety criteria. Analysis of cooling in the reflector tank examines various cooling options for the reflector tank components. This work investigated multiple forced convection designs as well as natural convection cooling requirements. Lift forces on the inner control rods caused by the upward coolant flow were also examined. Initial control rod designs were such that a sheared control rod would tendmore » to lift because of flow forces. Design changes were recommended that would eliminate this issue. They included geometry changes to the inner control rod cooling channels, changes to the orificing in the central hole region, and reduction of inner control rod coolant velocity.« less

Authors:
; ; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
OSTI Identifier:
283708
Report Number(s):
ORNL/TM-12398/R1
ON: DE96013253; TRN: 96:020923
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-96OR22464
Resource Type:
Technical Report
Resource Relation:
Other Information: PBD: May 1996
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
22 NUCLEAR REACTOR TECHNOLOGY; RESEARCH REACTORS; REACTOR COOLING SYSTEMS; FUEL ELEMENTS; DESIGN; HEAT TRANSFER; HYDRAULICS; REACTOR CORES; FORCED CONVECTION; NATURAL CONVECTION; CONTROL ELEMENTS

Citation Formats

Yoder, G.L., Carbajo, J.J., Morris, D.G., and Nelson, W.R.. Update to advanced neutron source steady-state thermal-hydraulic report. United States: N. p., 1996. Web. doi:10.2172/283708.
Copy to clipboard
Yoder, G.L., Carbajo, J.J., Morris, D.G., & Nelson, W.R.. Update to advanced neutron source steady-state thermal-hydraulic report. United States. doi:10.2172/283708.
Copy to clipboard
Yoder, G.L., Carbajo, J.J., Morris, D.G., and Nelson, W.R.. Wed . "Update to advanced neutron source steady-state thermal-hydraulic report". United States. doi:10.2172/283708. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/283708.
Copy to clipboard
@article{osti_283708,
title = {Update to advanced neutron source steady-state thermal-hydraulic report},
author = {Yoder, G.L. and Carbajo, J.J. and Morris, D.G. and Nelson, W.R.},
abstractNote = {This report is intended to be a supplement to ORNL/TM-12398, Steady-State Thermal-Hydraulic Design Analysis of the Advanced Neutron Source Reactor. It updates the core thermal-hydrualic design to the latest three-element configuration and also provides the most recent information on the thermal-hydraulic statistical uncertainty analysis. In addition, it includes calculations of beam tube cooling and control rod lift forces, which were not addressed in the initial report. This report describes work that is a snapshot in time as it stood at the end of the project. The three-element core calculations include a description of changes made to the overall coolant system; however, most of the analysis is focused on fuel loading thermal-hydraulic calculations. This analysis uses updated uncertainty values and indicates that a two-dimensional fuel grading in the three-element core would still be necessary to meet the desired operating and safety criteria. Analysis of cooling in the reflector tank examines various cooling options for the reflector tank components. This work investigated multiple forced convection designs as well as natural convection cooling requirements. Lift forces on the inner control rods caused by the upward coolant flow were also examined. Initial control rod designs were such that a sheared control rod would tend to lift because of flow forces. Design changes were recommended that would eliminate this issue. They included geometry changes to the inner control rod cooling channels, changes to the orificing in the central hole region, and reduction of inner control rod coolant velocity.},
doi = {10.2172/283708},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed May 01 00:00:00 EDT 1996},
month = {Wed May 01 00:00:00 EDT 1996}
}
Copy to clipboard
Technical Report:
View Technical Report (6.51 MB)
DOI:  10.2172/283708
Save / Share:
Export Metadata
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.

  • ; ; ; ...
    This document describes the code used to perform Thermal Analysis of Steady-State-Heat-Transfer for the Advanced Neutron Source (ANS) Reactor (TASHA). More specifically, the code is designed for thermal analysis of the fuel elements. The new code reflects changes to the High Flux Isotope Reactor steady-state thermal-hydraulics code. These changes were aimed at both improving the code`s predictive ability and allowing statistical thermal-hydraulic uncertainty analysis to be performed. A significant portion of the changes were aimed at improving the correlation package in the code. This involved incorporating more recent correlations for both single-phase flow and two-phase flow thermal limits, including themore » addition of correlations to predict the phenomenon of flow excursion. Since the code was to be used in the design of the ANS, changes were made to allow the code to predict limiting powers for a variety of thermal limits, including critical heat flux, flow excursion, incipient boiling, oxide spallation, maximum centerline temperature, and surface temperature equal to the saturation temperature. Statistical uncertainty analysis also required several changes to the code itself as well as changes to the code input format. This report describes these changes in enough detail to allow the reader to interpret code results and also to understand where the changes were made in the code programming. This report is not intended to be a stand alone report for running the code, however, and should be used in concert with the two previous reports published on the original code. Sample input and output files are also included to help accomplish these goals. In addition, a section is included that describes requirements for a new, more modem code that the project planned to develop.« less

  • ;
    The Advanced Neutron Source (ANS), in its conceptual design phase at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was to be a user-oriented neutron research facility producing the most intense steady-state flux of thermal and cold neutrons in the world. Among its many scientific applications, the production of cold neutrons was a significant research mission for the ANS. The cold neutrons come from two independent cold sources positioned near the reactor core. Contained by an aluminum alloy vessel, each cold source is a 410-mm-diam sphere of liquid deuterium that functions both as a neutron moderator and a cryogenic coolant. With nuclear heating ofmore » the containment vessel and internal baffling, steady-state operation requires close control of the liquid deuterium flow near the vessel`s inner surface. Preliminary thermal-hydraulic analyses supporting the cold source design were performed with heat conduction simulations of the vessel walls and multidimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations of the liquid deuterium flow and heat transfer. This report presents the starting phase of a challenging program and describes the cold source conceptual design, the thermal-hydraulic feasibility studies of the containment vessel, and the future computational and experimental studies that were planned to verify the final design.« less

  • ; ;
    In order to utilize reduced enrichment fuel, the three-element-core design has been proposed. The proposed core configuration consists of inner, middle, and outer elements, with the middle element offset axially beneath the inner and outer elements, which are axially aligned. The three-element-core RELAP5 model assumes that the reactor hardware is changed only within the core region, so that the loop piping, heat exchangers, and pumps remain as assumed for the two-element-core configuration. However, the total flow rate through the core is greater and the pressure drop across the core is less so that the primary coolant pumps and heat exchangersmore » are operating at a different point in their performance curves. This report describes the new RELAP5 input for the core components.« less

  • The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been used to help determine the importance of components and phenomena in thermal-hydraulic safety analyses of nuclear reactors. The AHP results are based, in part on expert opinion. Therefore, it is prudent to evaluate the uncertainty of the AHP ranks of importance. Prior applications have addressed uncertainty with experimental data comparisons and bounding sensitivity calculations. These methods work well when a sufficient experimental data base exists to justify the comparisons. However, in the case of limited or no experimental data the size of the uncertainty is normally made conservatively large. Accordingly, the author hasmore » taken another approach, that of performing a statistically based uncertainty analysis. The new work is based on prior evaluations of the importance of components and phenomena in the thermal-hydraulic safety analysis of the Advanced Neutron Source Reactor (ANSR), a new facility now in the design phase. The uncertainty during large break loss of coolant, and decay heat removal scenarios is estimated by assigning a probability distribution function (pdf) to the potential error in the initial expert estimates of pair-wise importance between the components. Using a Monte Carlo sampling technique, the error pdfs are propagated through the AHP software solutions to determine a pdf of uncertainty in the system wide importance of each component. To enhance the generality of the results, study of one other problem having different number of elements is reported, as are the effects of a larger assumed pdf error in the expert ranks. Validation of the Monte Carlo sample size and repeatability are also documented.« less

  • The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been used to help determine the importance of components and phenomena in thermal-hydraulic safety analyses of nuclear reactors. The AHP results are based, in part on expert opinion. Therefore, it is prudent to evaluate the uncertainty of the AHP ranks of importance. Prior applications have addressed uncertainty with experimental data comparisons and bounding sensitivity calculations. These methods work well when a sufficient experimental data base exists to justify the comparisons. However, in the case of limited or no experimental data the size of the uncertainty is normally made conservatively large. Accordingly, the author hasmore » taken another approach, that of performing a statistically based uncertainty analysis. The new work is based on prior evaluations of the importance of components and phenomena in the thermal-hydraulic safety analysis of the Advanced Neutron Source Reactor (ANSR), a new facility now in the design phase. The uncertainty during large break loss of coolant, and decay heat removal scenarios is estimated by assigning a probability distribution function (pdf) to the potential error in the initial expert estimates of pair-wise importance between the components. Using a Monte Carlo sampling technique, the error pdfs are propagated through the AHP software solutions to determine a pdf of uncertainty in the system wide importance of each component. To enhance the generality of the results, study of one other problem having different number of elements is reported, as are the effects of a larger assumed pdf error in the expert ranks. Validation of the Monte Carlo sample size and repeatability are also documented.« less