Thermal Experimental and Analysis of Vertical Spent Fuel Dry Storage Canister

Abstract

A full-scale prototype of vertical ventilated spent fuel dry storage canister is tested to evaluate its heat removal performance. Specifically, a temporary shelter is built to resemble the factory encompassing dry storage canisters. Electrical heating components with designed heat power are designed to represent the spent fuel assemblies inside the canister. From the test data its accordance with thermal safety related rules and guidance is proved. Furthermore, these data are compared with the simulated results, and the simulated results using CFD computer code of CFX. It is shown that the temperatures obtained from test agree well with the simulated results, and the simulated temperature of each component is no more than 10% higher than the test data, the velocity inside air-channel is in range of 1m/s, which is close to the environmental wind velocity of mid-summer of the testing site. It is also shown that conductive heat transfer vial air channel between the concrete over-pack and the steel canister covers more than 2/3 of the total heat load, indicating that conductive heat transfer plays a major role compared with heat conduction and radiation. From the full-scale prototype testing, it is shown that the vertical dry storage canister design has inherited conservatism from the aspect of thermal safety, And it is reasonable and acceptable to use CFD numerical calculation method for thermal analysis of this type of ventilated spent fuel dry storage system.