Natural Convection Heat Transfer Within Horizontal Spent Nuclear Fuel Assemblies

Natural Convection Heat Transfer Within Horizontal Spent Nuclear Fuel Assemblies
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 333
Release: 1995
Genre:
ISBN:

Natural convection heat transfer is experimentally investigated in an enclosed horizontal rod bundle, which characterizes a spent nuclear fuel assembly during dry storage and/or transport conditions. The basic test section consists of a square array of sixty-four stainless steel tubular heaters enclosed within a water-cooled rectangular copper heat exchanger. The heaters are supplied with a uniform power generation per unit length while the surrounding enclosure is maintained at a uniform temperature. The test section resides within a vacuum/pressure chamber in order to subject the assembly to a range of pressure statepoints and various backfill gases. The objective of this experimental study is to obtain convection correlations which can be used in order to easily incorporate convective effects into analytical models of horizontal spent fuel systems, and also to investigate the physical nature of natural convection in enclosed horizontal rod bundles in general. The resulting data consist of: (1) measured temperatures within the assembly as a function of power, pressure, and backfill gas; (2) the relative radiative contribution for the range of observed temperatures; (3) correlations of convective Nusselt number and Rayleigh number for the rod bundle as a whole; and (4) correlations of convective Nusselt number as a function of Rayleigh number for individual rods within the array.

Experimental Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Over Drift-emplaced Canisters

Experimental Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Over Drift-emplaced Canisters
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 8
Release: 1994
Genre:
ISBN:

Drift-emplaced waste canisters are under consideration for the long-term storage of high-level spent fuel in the proposed underground repository at Yucca Mountain. These canisters will be placed on pedestals above the floor of the drifts and exchange heat with the walls of the drift and with air circulating through the repository. To assess the requirements of the repository ventilation system, values of the dimensionless convective heat transfer coefficient and the pressure drop across individual canisters were measured in a experimental model of a drift. The results were curvefitted as functions of the spacing between the canisters and the Reynolds number of the flow. Both natural and forced convection effects were investigated.