Whole Core Thermal-Hydraulic Design of a Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor Considering the Gamma Energy Transport

Since a fuel cladding failure is the most important parameter in a core thermal-hydraulic design, the conceptual design stage only involves fuel assemblies. However, although non-fuel assemblies such as control rod, reflector, and B4C generate a relatively smaller thermal power compared to fuel assemblies, they also require independent flow allocation to properly cool down each assembly. The thermal power in non-fuel assemblies is produced from both neutron and gamma energy, and thus the core thermal-hydraulic design including non-fuel assemblies should consider an energy redistribution by the gamma energy transport. To design non-fuel assemblies, the design-limiting parameters should be determined considering the thermal failure modes. While fuel assemblies set a limiting factor with cladding creep temperature to prevent a fission product ejection from the fuel rods, non-fuel assemblies restrict their outlet temperature to minimize thermally induced stress on the upper internal structure (UIS). This work employs a heat generation distribution reflecting both neutron and gamma transport. The whole core thermal-hydraulic design including fuel and non-fuel assemblies is then conducted using the SLTHEN (Steady-State LMR Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis Code Based on ENERGY Model) code. The other procedures follow from the previous conceptual design