Three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of dry spent nuclear fuel storage canisters

摘要

One of the interim storage configurations being considered for aluminum-clad foreign research reactor fuel, such as the Material and Testing Reactor (MTR) design, is in a dry storage facility. To support design studies of storage options, a computational and experimental program was conducted at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The objective was to develop computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models which would be benchmarked using data obtained from a full scale heat transfer experiment conducted in the SRS Experimental Thermal Fluids Laboratory. The current work documents the CFD approach and presents comparison of results with experimental data. CFDS-FLOW3D (version 3.3) CFD code has been used to model the 3-dimensional convective velocity and temperature distributions within a single dry storage canister of MTR fuel elements. For the present analysis, the Boussinesq approximation was used for the consideration of buoyancy-driven natural convection. Comparison of the CFD code can be used to predict reasonably accurate flow and thermal behavior of a typical foreign research reactor fuel stored in a dry storage facility.