Thermal-hydraulic Design and CFD Analysis of Fuel Assembly for China Lead-based Research Reactor

摘要

Chinese Academy of Sciences had launched a Strategic Priority Research Program to develop Accelerator Driven System (ADS) for nuclear waste transmutation since 2011. China Lead-based Research Reactor (CLEAR-I) was selected as the reference reactor system in China ADS project. In this contribution, the hottest fuel assembly (FA) in the core was selected as the analysis object; 3D CFD analysis of the hottest FA thermal-hydraulic was carried out. The results show that: 1) the key parameters including Liquid Lead-Bismuth (LBE) mass flow rate, cladding temperature are lower than the corresponding design limits; 2) wires play an important role in mixing the coolant to make stronger turbulence intensify in center sub-channels of FA than edge and corner sub-channels; 3) the friction factor decreases in the entrance region of FA then fluctuates periodically in the fully developed region, while the steep decline of Nusselt number has taken place in the entrance of active zone, and then decrease smoothly to zero near the outlet of active zone.