Thermal hydraulic calculation of the HTR-10 for the initial and equilibrium core

Abstract

The thermal hydraulic calculations of the 10 MW high temperature gas-cooled-test module (HTR-10) are among the most important indications to judge the reactor performance under design conditions. The power distribution, the temperature distribution and the flow distribution of the HTR-10 are calculated for initial and equilibrium core in this paper. The temperature distribution includes the temperature parameters of fuel elements, the helium coolant and the main components in the reactor. In the temperature calculation of fuel elements, several uncertain factors are considered carefully, including non-uniform burnup, power distribution deviation, manufacture deviation of fuel elements, graphite balls mixed with fuel balls in the core, calculation deviation of heat transfer and so on. In the flow distribution calculation, the conservative pebble bed core flow value is selected. The results show that the maximum fuel temperature is much lower than the limitation and the flow distribution can meet the cooling requirement in the reactor core.