The Role of COMSOL Toward a Low-Enriched Uranium Fuel Design for the High Flux Isotope Reactor
Design and safety analyses are underway to convert the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) from a high-enriched uranium (HEU) fuel to a low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. The primary constraint for the project is that the overall fuel plate dimensions and the current neutron flux performance must remain unchanged. This allows minimal impact on the facility and cost for the conversion, and provides transparency to the HFIR customer base and research projects that depend on the facility for isotopes and neutron flux. As a consequence, the LEU design demands more accuracy and less margin in the analysis efforts than the original design. Several technical disciplines are required to complete this conversion including nuclear reactor physics, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, structural mechanics, fuel fabrication, and engineering design. The role of COMSOL is to provide the fully-coupled 3D multi-physics analysis for heat transfer, turbulent flow, and structural mechanics of the fuel plates and flow channels. A goal is for COMSOL to simulate the entire fuel element array of fuel plates (171 inner, 369 outer). This paper describes the progress that has been made toward development of benchmark validation models of the existing HEU inner-element fuel plates.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 965868
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: COMSOL Conference Boston 2009 - Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America - 10/8/2009 12:00:00 AM-10/10/2009 12:00:00 AM
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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