Abstract
The heat pipe cooled reactor is a solid-state reactor using heat pipes to passively transfer heat generated from the reactor, which is a potential and near-term space nuclear power system. This paper introduces the coupling scheme between the continuous energy Reactor Monte Carlo (RMC) code and the finite element method commercial software ANSYS. Monte Carlo method has the advantages of flexible geometry modeling and continuous-energy nuclear cross sections. ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL) is used to determine the detailed temperature distributions and geometric deformation. The on-the-fly temperature treatment of cross sections was adopted in RMC code to solve the memory problems and to speed up simulations. This paper proposed a geometric updating strategy and reactivity feedback methods for the geometric deformation of the solid-state core. The neutronic and thermal-mechanical coupling platform is developed to analyze and further to optimize the heat pipe cooled reactor design. The present coupling codes analyze a 2D central cross-section model for MEGAPOWER heat pipe cooled reactor. The thermal-mechanical feedback reveals that the solid-state reactor has a negative reactivity feedback (~1.5 pcm/K) while it has a deterioration in heat transfer due to the expansion.
Highlights
A heat pipe cooled reactor refers to a solid-state reactor that uses heat pipes to conduct heat generated from the reactor core to the secondary circuit system or thermoelectric conversion device instead of a pump-driven primary circuit system
Monte Carlo code RMC and Finite element software ANSYS RMC (Reactor Monte Carlo code) is a new Monte Carlo neutron and photon transport code developed by the Department of Engineering Physics at Tsinghua University[7], which has been validated for criticality calculation, burn-up calculation, neutron and photon coupled transport calculation, full-core refueling simulation under multiple parallel modes [8,9]
The heat pipe cooled reactor model is built by RMC and ANSYS, as shown in Fig. 3, referring to the parameters of the heat pipe reactor published by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) [5] and INL (Idaho National Laboratory) [12]
Summary
A heat pipe cooled reactor refers to a solid-state reactor that uses heat pipes to conduct heat generated from the reactor core to the secondary circuit system or thermoelectric conversion device instead of a pump-driven primary circuit system. In order to simplify reactor design and to improve the inherent safety characteristics of space nuclear reactors, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) proposed a new space nuclear reactor conceptual design with efficient heat pipe thermal conductivity elements, i.e., the heat pipe cooled reactor [1]. This modular design concept of the solid-state reactor with heat pipes, which transfers the heat effectively and passively, significantly simplifies the system and designs a much more. MEGAPOWER heat pipe cooled reactor is analyzed by the N/T-M coupling program from three dimensions of neutron physics, thermal safety, and mechanics
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