Contact

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h. c. Uwe Hampel

Head
Experimental Thermal Fluid Dynamics
u.hampel@hzdr.de
Phone: +49 351 260 2772

Safety of spent fuel pools: Experimental analysis, modeling and validation of system and CFD codes (SINABEL)

Background

The spent fuel pool is an intermediate storage for spent fuel elements as well as fresh fuel elements during refueling operations. As a result of a longer persisting station black out or leakage in the spent fuel pool liner, the cooling of the stored spent fuel can potentially not be guaranteed. This could result in a partial or full drainage and an increase of the fuel element temperatures due to the decreased heat transfer.

Project

The objective of the German national joint project SINABEL is the experimental investigation and modelling of the thermal hydraulics in a mock-up of a boiling water reactor fuel element (test facility ALADIN) to gain a better understanding of the underlying processes and to assess the time course of such an accident scenario. The test facility is designed to reproduce the conditions of one fuel element within the storage rack and is instrumented on a high-grade level. Besides commercially available measurement technology, specially developed instrumentation is applied. As there is no adequate commercial instrumentation for the measurement of the gas-phase velocities under the given boundary conditions of high temperatures and restricted mechanical and optical accessibility available, an own sensor has been developed and deployed.

Results

For the subchannel-wise synchronous measurement of steam temperature and velocity a novel thermal anemometry grid sensor (TAGS) was developed. It basis on a set of platinum temperature resistors connected in a matrix-like way. By variation of the applied voltage the gas phase temperature and velocity can be measured sequentially via resistance thermometry and thermal anemometry, respectively, via a special excitation-acquisition scheme.



With the help of the TAGS measurements we could clarify the role of convective cooling of the heated rods by rising steam or circulating air for the accident scenarios of spent fuel pool during dry-out and for the complete dried state.



Partners

  • Technische Universität Dresden, Fakultät Maschinenwesen, Institut für Energietechnik, Professur für Wasserstoff- und Kernenergietechnik
  • Technische Universität Dresden, Fakultät Maschinenwesen, Institut für Strömungsmechanik
  • Hochschule Zittau-Görlitz, Institut für Prozeßtechnik, Prozeßautomatisierung und Meßtechnik
  • Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Institut für Fluiddynamik

BMBF

Acknowledgement

This work is part of the research project “SINABEL” and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the grant number 02NUK027E. Responsibility for the content lies with the author.


Publications

  • Arlit, M.; Schleicher, E.; Hampel, U.
    Thermal anemometry grid sensor for spatially-resolved measurement of gas phase temperature and velocity in fuel element subchannels
    17th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-17), 03.-08.09.2017, Xi´an, China
  • M. Arlit, E. Schleicher, U. Hampel
    Thermal anemometry grid sensor
    Sensors 17(2017), 1663
  • Arlit, M.; Partmann, C.; Schleicher, E.; Schuster, C.; Hurtado, A.; Hampel, U.
    Instrumentation for Experiments on a Fuel Element Mock-Up for the study of Thermal Hydraulics for Loss of Cooling or Coolant Scenarios in Spent Fuel Pools
    Nuclear Engineering and Design (2018), DOI:10.1016/j.nucengdes.2017.06.034
  • Arlit, M.; Partmann, C.; Schleicher, E.; Schuster, C.; Hurtado, A.; Hampel, U.
    Instrumentation for experiments on a fuel element mock-up for the study of thermal hydraulics for loss of cooling or coolant scenarios in spent fuel pools
    SWINTH-2016 (Specialists Workshop on Advanced Instrumentation and Measurement Techniques for Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics), 15.-17.06.2016, Livorno, Italia
  • Arlit, M.; Partmann, C.; Schleicher, E.; Hampel, U.
    Spatially resolved measurement of gas phase temperature and velocity in the subchannels of a fuel element during dry-out
    NURETH-16 - 16th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermalhydraulics, 30.08.-04.09.2015, Chicago, USA