KRUSTY Reactor Design

Poston, David I.; Gibson, Marc A.; Godfroy, Tom; McClure, Patrick

doi:10.1080/00295450.2020.1725382

Cited by 76 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…7, and all graphs in this paper, is actually the normalized neutron detector reading. The neutron detector is a 3 He detector, for which the readout is amps. The flux at the neutron detector location is almost directly proportional to the flux/fission in the core.…”

Section: Krusty Warm Critical Experiments • Poston Et Al S81mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The KRUSTY design is described in papers by Gibson et al 2 and Poston et al 3 The reactor design is remarkably simple: A solid cylindrical core of UMo is cooled by Na heat pipes, surrounded by a BeO neutron reflector. The UMo core is approximately the size of a paper towel roll: 11-cm diameter and 25-cm height.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The primary goal of KRUSTY was to demonstrate the nuclear-powered operation of a flightlike space reactor. Several technical goals were prioritized to make the test as prototypic as possible, 3 and testing was focused on demonstrating reactor behavior and providing data to validate models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Results of the KRUSTY Warm Critical Experiments

et al. 2020

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The Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY (KRUSTY) was a prototypic nuclear-powered test of a 5-kW(thermal) Kilopower space reactor. This paper presents results from the KRUSTY warm critical experiments, which were completed prior to the final system test. The first set of criticals comprised cold or zero-power criticals; i.e., the core was not heated by fission power. These were followed by three warm criticals, where fission power heated the core to 200°C, 300°C, and 450°C, respectively. These criticals provided the data, confidence, and regulatory framework that were needed to proceed with the KRUSTY nuclear system test. The criticals also provided valuable data for the benchmarking of codes applicable to all nuclear systems. Finally, a comparison of KRUSTY results to pretest predictions is provided, and overall, the models matched the experimental results very closely.

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Section: Krusty Warm Critical Experiments • Poston Et Al S81mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Results of the KRUSTY Warm Critical Experiments

et al. 2020

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“…The Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) was a demonstration reactor designed by LANL and NASA [24]. The reactor was fueled with 93 wt% U235 in the form of U8Mo to produce 1 kW electric power.…”

Section: Modeling Of Krustymentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiphysics Analysis of Load Following and Safety Transients for MicroReactors

Stauff¹,

Abdelhameed²,

Cao³

et al. 2022

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The tools developed within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy's Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program aim at providing highfidelity multiphysics modeling capabilities to support design and licensing of various types of advanced nuclear reactors, including the technologies being developed by U.S. microreactor vendors relying on heat pipe and gas-cooled technologies. In FY-2022, the NEAMS Multiphysics Applications team made significant progress both in demonstrating capabilities applied to microreactor problems, and in supporting NEAMS developers.Three microreactor models were developed through this project to support a demonstration of NEAMS tools capabilities for solving challenging microreactor modeling problems:1-The Heat Pipe MicroReactor (HP-MR) unit-cell and full core models developed in FY-2021 were updated with increased fidelity. This work demonstrates the capability to perform high-fidelity multiphysics load-following and heat pipe cascading failures using coupled Griffin-BISON-Sockeye simulations. Such analysis confirmed the HP-MR concept ability to operate in a flexible way and for the reactor to follow the load, and its ability to avoid heat pipe cascading failure unless designed with high power close to operating failure limits of its heat pipes.2-A Gas-Cooled MicroReactor (GC-MR) assembly model was developed incorporating various modeling challenges expected for horizontal gas-cooled microreactors. A wide range of high-fidelity multiphysics transient analyses were simulated by coupling Griffin/BISON/SAM. These simulations showcased various types of load-following transients (large daily or short frequent power variations) and accidental transients that are specific to GC-MRs (flow blockage, depressurization, etc.). This initial analysis confirms the ability of the GC-MR to withstand such accidental transients without leading to severe accidents. Leveraging this experience, a full core GC-MR was also modelled based on industry design and initial steady-state multiphysics simulations (Griffin/SAM) were completed.3-An initial model of the Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) experiment was developed leveraging initial work performed at LANL. This model was significantly updated and improved, and initial steady-state multiphysics simulations (with coupled Griffin/BISON/Sockeye) were completed.

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“…The typical heat pipe cooled reactor named KRUSTY is chosen as the research object. It is the prototype reactor to evaluate the performance of Kilopower reactor system (Poston et al, 2020;Sanchez et al, 2020;McClure et al, 2020b) The composition of KRUSTY reactor is shown in Figure 10. It includes the U-Mo fuel, the BeO reflector, the control rod, the shielding layer, the Na heat pipes, the vacuum vessel, the lift table, and the Stirling generators.…”

Section: Reactor Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Super Thermal Conductivity Model for High-Temperature Heat Pipe Applied to Heat Pipe Cooled Reactor

Guo

et al. 2022

Front. Energy Res.

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Differing from the traditional Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), heat pipe cooled reactor adopts the high-temperature heat pipes to transport fission heat generated in the reactor core. Therefore, the basis of coupling calculation on this type of reactor system is to have a suitable model for high-temperature heat pipe simulation. Not only is it required that this model can well describe the transient characteristics of heat pipe, but it should be simple enough to reduce the computational resource. In this paper, the super thermal conductivity model (STCM) for high-temperature heat pipe is proposed for this purpose. In this model, heat transport of vapor flow is simplified as high efficiency heat conductance. Combined with the network method, the evaporation rate, the condensation rate, and the flow rate in the wick region can be preliminarily obtained. Using recommended equations to calculate the heat transfer limitation, this model can realize the safety judgment of heat pipe. The heating system for high-temperature heat pipe is established to validate this model. The heating experiments with different heating powers is tested. Then, this model is applied on the numerical calculation of Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY (KRUSTY) reactor. In the steady state calculation, the results show that the temperature distribution on contact surface between fuel and heat pipe is nonuniform, which will lead to higher peak temperature and temperature difference for the reactor core. In the transient calculation, the load-following accident is chosen. Comparing with the experimental results, the applicability of the proposed model on heat pipe cooled reactor is verified. This model can be used for heat pipe cooled reactor simulation.

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KRUSTY Reactor Design

Cited by 76 publications

References 10 publications

Results of the KRUSTY Warm Critical Experiments

Results of the KRUSTY Warm Critical Experiments

Multiphysics Analysis of Load Following and Safety Transients for MicroReactors

The Super Thermal Conductivity Model for High-Temperature Heat Pipe Applied to Heat Pipe Cooled Reactor

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