Heat Dissipation Study on Dry Vault Storage System for Spent Fuel

摘要

Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel is now undertaken as a national program in Japan, but the generation of spent fuel is estimated to exceed the reprocessing capacity . Therefore, spent fuel must be stored. Development of a dry vault system for spent fuel utilizing natural convection cooling is now underway at IHI. The heat dissipation performance of the storage system has been studied using analytical and experimental methods. Conditions under which the maximum fuel temperature remains below the permissible value have been sought using a simple analytical model. A structural model for the surroundings of the canister, which is the sealed container for spent fuel, was provided to measure thermal performance. Thermal fields in the canister was also calculated, and compared with test results.