CFD analysis of a cask for spent fuel dry storage: Model fundamentals and sensitivity studies

On the way to enabling FRAPCON-3 to model spent fuel under dry storage conditions: The thermal evolution

“…The fuel assemblies have been approximated as porous rectangular parallelepipeds with internal heat generation. An effective thermal conductivity and ad-hoc pressure drop have been derived, which consistency was previously demonstrated (Herranz et al, 2015). All fuel assemblies have the same power (mentioned above).…”

“…Fig. 2 shows the longitudinal conceptual section of the cask model (Herranz et al, 2015). Concerning fuel assemblies, a typical 17 Â 17 PWR design has been used (O'Donnell et al, 2001;Geelhood et al, 2009).…”

“…A thorough description of the modelling done in FLUENT is given by Herranz et al (2015). It is worth to note that the validation of the thermal results is not possible due to the lack of actual data from the storage system studied.…”

“…It is worth to note that the validation of the thermal results is not possible due to the lack of actual data from the storage system studied. Instead, the 3D CFD model verification has been done by comparing with thermal calculations (Herranz et al, 2015). The main hypotheses and approximations considered are the following:…”

“…Currently, 3D thermo-fluid dynamics analysis is a credited technology for cask thermal studies. An accurate insight into the thermal evolution of the cask is achieved by CFD 3D codes (Heng et al, 2002;Zigh and Solis, 2008;Lee et al, 2009;Holtec International, 2010;Tseng et al, 2011;Herranz et al, 2015). Their use for modelling spent fuel performance would allow enhancing the thermo-mechanical predictions.…”