Thermal hydraulic analysis of hydride fuels in BWR's

This thesis contributes to the hydride nuclear fuel project being completed by UC Berkeley and MIT to assess the possible benefits of using hydride fuel in light water nuclear reactors (LWR's). More specifically, this thesis deals with the thermal hydraulic analysis of BWR reactors. Several papers and theses have already been written for this project, mainly focusing on PWR reactors. The primary goal of this thesis is to find the optimal fuel rod lattice pitch and diameter such that a reactor can safely operate at the highest possible power. This fuel geometry is found out of hundreds of possible choices by using a script to automate a parametric study. A similar process was completed by an MIT graduate student for PWR reactors. While this thesis demonstrates the ability to use such a method for thermal hydraulic BWR analysis, there are some shortcomings which are mainly due to the difficulty of obtaining proprietary information about BWR nuclear reactors. All results hold equally for uranium dioxide as well as hydride fuel since the design limits imposed, critical heat flux, maximum flow velocity and pressure drop constrain only pin array geometry and diameter. It is shown that applicable uranium oxide and hydride fuel limits are both met within the constraints imposed by these three limits which were applied.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Creighton, John Everett

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Neil Todreas.

• Nuclear Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34443

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34443