Computational fluid dynamics simulation of material testing reactor spent fuel cooling in wet storage

Abstract Safe and efficient storage of spent fuel elements is an important aspect of the safety and economy of nuclear reactors. The present work investigates the thermal-hydraulic behaviour of the cooling process for the nuclear spent fuel stored in the material testing reactor auxiliary pool. The parameters affected by the spent fuel cooling accuracy, the decay power of spent fuel and the initial temperature of the coolant pool are studied. These parameters are simulated by developing a model using thermal-hydraulic computational fluid dynamics, ANSYS FLUENT 17.2 Code. The developed model is evaluated by the previous measurements; an experimental test rig is designed and constructed to investigate the thermal-hydraulic behaviour of the natural circulation cooling of the nuclear spent fuel. The present study uses the validated model to simulate numerically the forced convection heat transfer for spent fuel pools. Various coolant velocities and decay powers are examined. Also, the thermal-hydraulic behaviour of the nuclear spent fuel is studied in transient mode; the initial temperature is raised to 338K. The results show the spent fuel cooling improves as the coolant velocity increases. A good agreement was identified after comparing experimental results with the investigated model.