Thermal Hydraulics Analysis on a Simplified Model of Spent Fuel Pool

Abstract

The spent fuel still has massive decay heat and is temporarily stored in the spent fuel pool, after unloaded from the reactor core; it is cooled by the circulating water in the spent fuel pool. The present study generally agreed that the spent fuel pool is relatively safe when the cooling water works, even if under accident conditions. It is generally considered that the thermal-hydraulic process in the spent fuel pool is very slow, and does not endanger the safety of nuclear power plant. But the boiling in the pool has been given more and more attention after the Fukushima nuclear accident; especially after the failure of core safety injection and the cooling water in the spent fuel pool is lost. School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, North China Electric Power University intends to perform overall test bench to simulate the AP1000 spent fuel pool, the experimented data can be used to validate the results of the COSINE software calculations. In this paper, the numerical simulation is performed with CFD software to calculate the temperature, velocity, pressure field of the scaled spent fuel pool experimental bench; it can provide the guideline for the selection of the test section measuring instruments and the arrangement of the measuring points. Also, it’s essential to verify the COSINE software and guide the experimental process.