A Critical Experimental Study of Bubble Effect in the Process of Spent Fuel Dissolving

Abstract

The influence of gas introduction on the critical safety of the nuclear fuel system under the condition of cold condition, given reactor material and geometry structure is studied. Refer to bubble effect test experiment on nuclear critical safety test device (YSR) and considering solid-liquid two-phase nuclear fuel system with uranyl nitrate solution - uranium dioxide fuel element as the experimental platform, the dynamic process of the real behavior of bubbles in uranyl nitrate solution has been simulated in the quasi-static way by replacing bubble generator with aluminous bubble simulation elements. Bubble effect is the reactivity change caused by the change of volume of solution, neutron leakage and absorption property in the nuclear fuel system due to the bubbles generated in the solution. In the dissolving process of spent fuel, oxygen or nitrogen are usually added to accelerate the dissolution of fuel element shear section, and some other bubble production are also caused by the heat released during the dissolution process. Here, the bubble production caused by the heat is omitted and only artificial gas introduction is considered in my study. When there are enough bubbles in the uranium solution system, the volume of the solution will increase, which will inevitably influence the absorption and leakage property of the neutrons, and further influence the reactivity of the nuclear fuel system. The corresponding relationship between the bubble-intake rate and the bubble equivalent diameter, arising velocity and bubble share is determined through fluid dynamics modeling to manufacture the aluminous bubble simulation elements. The theoretical calculation by MONK9A and the critical experimental measurements are also compared and analyzed in this paper. The results showed that the reactivity caused by bubbles was negative, and the greater the intake rate, the greater the negative effect. Meanwhile the theoretical calculated value was in good agreement with the experimental value and the maximum deviation was 63.4 pcm.