FEM (finite element method) thermal modeling and thermal hydraulic performance of an enhanced thermal conductivity UO₂/BeO composite fuel

Conference · Thu Mar 24 00:00:00 EDT 2011

OSTI ID:1055292

Zhou, Wenzhong ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States)

An enhanced thermal conductivity UO₂-BeO composite nuclear fuel was studied. A methodology to generate ANSYS (an engineering simulation software) FEM (Finite Element Method) thermal models of enhanced thermal conductivity oxide nuclear fuels was developed. The results showed significant increase in the fuel thermal conductivities and have good agreement with the measured ones. The reactor performance analysis showed that the decrease in centerline temperature was 250-350K for the UO₂-BeO composite fuel, and thus we can improve nuclear reactors' performance and safety, and high-level radioactive waste generation.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1055292
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-11-01854; LA-UR-11-1854; TRN: US1600065
• Resource Relation: Conference: 14. International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermohydraulics (NURETH-14), Toronto, ON (Canada), 25-30 Sep 2011
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
BERYLLIUM OXIDES
URANIUM DIOXIDE
NUCLEAR FUELS
THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
THERMAL HYDRAULICS
HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
PERFORMANCE
REACTORS
SAFETY
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION