Thermal Modeling of Hanford Lead Canister’s Heater Bench Tests

Abstract

Abstract A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was built to simulate the Hanford Lead Canister (HLC). The HLC is intended to act as a leading indicator of canister degradation as part of the Hanford site’s aging management plan for long term storage of encapsulated cesium and strontium material. It will be deployed with heaters inside to accurately simulate the environmental conditions experienced by units containing radioactive material. The HLC will be placed on a dry storage pad near dry storage systems with encapsulated radioactive material. A thermal CFD model was developed to verify that the heaters can replicate the decay heat of a canister with nuclear material and to aid in understanding the HLC’s thermal environment, including the local air flow within the canister storage system. In addition to the detailed CFD model, a simple model of the dry storage systems, including the HLC, sitting on the dry storage pad was constructed to understand how wind speed and direction will impact airflow in and around the HLC. The dry storage pad model will explicitly model the external environment and provide boundary conditions to the detailed stand-alone CFD model. Wind flow around the storage modules will cause a pressure distribution along external surfaces and openings, resulting in a pressure difference between the inlets and outlets of the storage module that will impact airflow through the module. The HLC model will need to account for both wind and thermally driven flows in the heated storage module. This study investigates how to account for wind in the stand alone HLC thermal model based on pressure differences at the inlets and outlets for various wind speeds in a larger model that simulates the external environment around the storage module.