US EPA

8781759 

Journal Article 

Calculation of fuel temperature profile for heavy water moderated natural uranium oxide fuel using two gas mixture conductance model for noble gas Helium and Xenon 

Jha, A; Gupta, A; Das, R; Paraswar, S 

2020 

1 

Nuclear Engineering and Technology
ISSN: 1738-5733 

Elsevier 

52 

12 

2760-2770 

English 

10.1016/j.net.2020.05.024 

WOS:000582613900008 

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1738573318308064
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A model for calculation of fuel temperature profile using binary gas mixture of Helium and Xenon for gap gas conductance is proposed here. In this model, the temperature profile of a fuel pencil from fuel centreline to fuel surface has been calculated by taking into account the dilution of Helium gas filled during fuel manufacturing due to accumulation of fission gas Xenon. In this model an explicit calculation of gap gas conductance of binary gas mixture of Helium and Xenon has been carried out. A computer code Fuel Characteristics Calculator (FCCAL) is developed for the model. The phenomena modelled by FCCAL takes into account heat conduction through the fuel pellet, heat transfer from pellet surface to the cladding through the gap gas and heat transfer from cladding to coolant. The binary noble gas mixture model used in FCCAL is an improvement over the parametric model of Lassmann and Pazdera. The results obtained from the code FCCAL is used for fuel temperature calculation in 3-D neutron diffusion solver for the coolant outlet temperature of the core at steady operation at full power. It is found that there is an improvement in calculation time without compromising accuracy with FCCAL. (C) 2020 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. 

PHWR; Natural uranium fuel; Fuel temperature profile; Gap gas; RELEASE