Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology

This study presents the thermal analyses of a spent fuel dry storage cask under normal and off-normal conditions. The environmental temperature is assumed to be 15 under the normal condition. The off-normal condition has an environmental temperature of 38 . An additional off-normal condition is considered as a partial blockage of the air inlet ducts. Two of the four air inlet ducts are assumed to be completely blocked. The significant thermal design feature of the storage cask is the air flow path used to remove the decay heat from the spent fuel. Natural circulation of the air inside the cask allows the concrete and fuel cladding temperatures to be maintained below the allowable values. The finite volume computational fluid dynamics code FLUENT was used for the thermal analysis. The maximum temperatures of the fuel rod and concrete overpack were lower than the allowable values under the normal and off-normal conditions.

Keywords

thermal analysis,spent fuel,storage cask,heat transfer,natural convection,thermal radiation,fluid flow