Heat Pipe-Cooled, Curved Fuel Plate, Fast Micro-Reactor for Use at Remote Sites
Disciplines
Nuclear Engineering
Abstract (300 words maximum)
The experiment is focused on designing, modeling, and analyzing a microreactor capable of producing between 1 and 1.5 MWe for use in remote locations and military installations. The reactor will be under 2 meters in diameter and uses fuel plates filled with UO2 fuel similar to the MIT Reactor (MITR) but has curved fuel plates arranged concentrically in 6 or 8 wedge sections instead of straight fuel plates in rhomboid-shaped fuel elements. This design also uses stainless steel heat pipes (potassium) to passively remove heat from the active core similar to the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Mega-Power concept, a heat pipe-cooled, 5 MWt fast reactor. MCNP is the software being used to model this reactor and analyze the effective multiplication factor. Using this data, the size of the fuel elements or reactor may need to be adjusted to reach the desired multiplication factor. Thermodynamic analyses will also be conducted to find the power produced by each individual fuel plate and the amount of heat carried away by each heat pipe. This data can be used to optimize the amount of heat pipes necessary in the core.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
SPCEET - Mechanical Engineering
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Andrew Hummel
Heat Pipe-Cooled, Curved Fuel Plate, Fast Micro-Reactor for Use at Remote Sites
The experiment is focused on designing, modeling, and analyzing a microreactor capable of producing between 1 and 1.5 MWe for use in remote locations and military installations. The reactor will be under 2 meters in diameter and uses fuel plates filled with UO2 fuel similar to the MIT Reactor (MITR) but has curved fuel plates arranged concentrically in 6 or 8 wedge sections instead of straight fuel plates in rhomboid-shaped fuel elements. This design also uses stainless steel heat pipes (potassium) to passively remove heat from the active core similar to the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Mega-Power concept, a heat pipe-cooled, 5 MWt fast reactor. MCNP is the software being used to model this reactor and analyze the effective multiplication factor. Using this data, the size of the fuel elements or reactor may need to be adjusted to reach the desired multiplication factor. Thermodynamic analyses will also be conducted to find the power produced by each individual fuel plate and the amount of heat carried away by each heat pipe. This data can be used to optimize the amount of heat pipes necessary in the core.