Cooling Channel Optimization in Additively Manufactured Gas-Cooled Reactor Core

Abstract

New designs for nuclear reactors are now able to take advantage of advanced manufacturing technologies and materials which provide a greater design space for optimization. The Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) is designed to demonstrate the revolutionary changes these developments bring to nuclear energy. Current TCR designs are based around a 3 MWth gas-cooled reactor which uses a mixture of traditionally and additively manufactured core components to offer an inherently safe core in a compact size. The TCR fuel forms are manufactured using conventionally fabricated uranium nitride tristructural isotropic (UN TRISO) fuel particles [1] embedded inside an addictively manufactured silicon carbide (SiC) matrix [2]. The fuel forms are first additively manufactured using binderjet printing followed by chemical vapor infiltration [3]. This additively manufactured design is novel compared to previous high temperature gas reactors which heavily rely upon cylindrical cooling channels or pebble bed designs [4]. Unfortunately, engineering software does not yet permit open-ended geometry optimization for thermal fluidic analysis. However, the problem’s mechanics give a few simple constraints that make the problem tractable without eliminating potentially useful designs. This work is focused on constricting the design for detailed optimization work to come while retaining the global optimum. This step is required for the TCR as no comparable design exists to baseline further optimization too. In this summary we first present the problem statement and constraints, then our analysis methods, and finally the results and conclusions of the early optimization work for cooling the TCR, a high temperature gas cooled reactor.