HEAT TRANSFER FROM SPENT REACTOR FUELS DURING SHIPPING:A PROPOSED METHOD FOR PREDICTING TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION IN FUEL BUNDLES AND COMPARISON WITH EXPERIMENTAL DATA

摘要

A simple method has been developed for calculating or predicting temperature distributions in spent reactor fuels in shipping casks. The method accounts for radiant heat transfer between all the individual pins in a square array. With the dimensions of the fuel bundle, the configura¬tion factors for radiation between various tubes in the bundle can be obtained from tabulated numerical calculations presented in this report. The configuration factors, along with the heat generation rates, surface emissivity, and the temperature of the wall of the cask can be used to estimate the temperature distribution automatically with a computer code presented in this report or possibly by hand calculations by the method outlined.