Prediction of The TREAT Facility Power and Temperature of Sirius-2c Nuclear Propulsion Fuel Experiment

This paper presents simulation results of the Sirius-2c full power experiment that was performed at the TREAT facility to support experiment modeling and transient analysis of the NASA-sponsored Sirius series of experiments for nuclear thermal propulsion applications. We presents a novel approach to predict the control rod motion and power of the reactor and the temperature of the specimen during transient experiments using the Griffin and Bison packages of the Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE). First, the model predicts the transient rod motion that results in the desired reactor power shape. Then, the temperature of the specimen is predicted based on the power deposited in the specimen. The prediction results are in good agreement with the measured reactor power and control rod position and over-predicted the specimen temperature which is mainly related to specimen surface emissivities. The reactor reaches a peak power of 80 MW and a specimen temperature of 2500 K and considering the right specimen emissivities the predicted temperature is in an excellent agreement with the measured values. This model can be utilized in helping and supporting the design and optimization a new experiments that are going to be irradiated in the TREAT facility.