TY - JOUR
T1 - Asymptotic hydrogen redistribution analysis in yttrium-hydride-moderated heat-pipe-cooled microreactors using DireWolf
AU - Terlizzi, Stefano
AU - Labouré, Vincent
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Laboratory Directed Research& Development (LDRD) Program under U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Idaho Operations Office, United States of America contract DE-AC07-05ID14517 . This research made use of the resources of the High Performance Computing Center at INL, which is supported by the DOE Office, United States of America of Nuclear Energy and by the Nuclear Science User Facilities. The authors also wish to thank Mark DeHart for his valuable comments and suggestions, which helped improve the quality of this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2023/6/15
Y1 - 2023/6/15
N2 - Yttrium hydride (YHx) is one of the materials being considered for moderating thermal and epithermal nuclear microreactors. One potential issue with YHx use is that the hydrogen redistributes in the hydride when thermal and concentration gradients are present. This hydrogen redistribution leads to spatial gradients in the hydrogen concentration, thus affecting neutron transport in the reactor. By building upon observations in prior works, this paper aims to gain a better understanding of the reactivity feedback associated with such hydrogen redistributions. In particular, we wish to understand the sign (+/−) of the hydrogen redistribution neutronic feedback, its order of magnitude, and its underlying physical causes. To achieve this goal, the DireWolf multiphysics software driver was used to solve the coupled radiation transport, heat transfer, heat pipe two-phase flow, and hydrogen redistribution equations for the Simplified Microreactor Benchmark Assessment (SiMBA) problem, a full-core microreactor numerical benchmark developed at Idaho National Laboratory.
AB - Yttrium hydride (YHx) is one of the materials being considered for moderating thermal and epithermal nuclear microreactors. One potential issue with YHx use is that the hydrogen redistributes in the hydride when thermal and concentration gradients are present. This hydrogen redistribution leads to spatial gradients in the hydrogen concentration, thus affecting neutron transport in the reactor. By building upon observations in prior works, this paper aims to gain a better understanding of the reactivity feedback associated with such hydrogen redistributions. In particular, we wish to understand the sign (+/−) of the hydrogen redistribution neutronic feedback, its order of magnitude, and its underlying physical causes. To achieve this goal, the DireWolf multiphysics software driver was used to solve the coupled radiation transport, heat transfer, heat pipe two-phase flow, and hydrogen redistribution equations for the Simplified Microreactor Benchmark Assessment (SiMBA) problem, a full-core microreactor numerical benchmark developed at Idaho National Laboratory.
KW - Bison
KW - Griffin
KW - Hydrogen redistribution
KW - Nuclear microreactors
KW - Yttrium hydride
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85148332386
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/7425e0d1-3e83-3aec-bdbc-a15df6d7a0e5/
U2 - 10.1016/j.anucene.2023.109735
DO - 10.1016/j.anucene.2023.109735
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85148332386
SN - 0306-4549
VL - 186
JO - Annals of Nuclear Energy
JF - Annals of Nuclear Energy
M1 - 109735
ER -