Steady State Temperature Distribution Investigation of HTR Core

Abstract

Reactor operation safety is highly related to fuel temperature parameter in the reactor core. To maintain the fuel in good integrity (no crack or melting), fuel temperature should be continuously within licensing criteria. Fuel temperature parameter is one of safety parameters in nuclear reactor operation. Fuel temperature is determined by local heat flux. High heat flux generation will cause a change in heat equilibrium and consequently result a change in fuel temperature. In the present study, steady state temperature distribution investigations of pebble bed for HTR-10 have been performed. The calculation is performed by using VSOP'94 code to do the calculation by which the core is divided into 50 components to represent the positions of various material compositions and to model fuel into 5 layers. The analysis is carried out based on the input data of reactor parameters, core specification, and fuel specifications as well as layer data of HTR-10. The results of this simulation in HTR-10 core at steady state indicated that the maximum temperature is 969.9°C at the solid material and 1031.3 °C in the fuel at the steady state condition. These temperatures are much lower than that of the maximum safety margin of fuel pebble, i.e. 1600°C, therefore, it can be concluded that TRISO fuel is able to contain all radioactive fission products.