Effect of Gd-alloyed Neutron Absorber on Thermal Performance of a Spent Fuel Cask

Abstract

A spent fuel cask must be designed to provide safety functions. In particular, in order to maintain the sub-criticality safety, different neutron absorbers have been used for the spent nuclear fuel management system. Although BORAL is the most used neutron absorber, several problems have been reported and it has some potential problems for long term storage of spent nuclear fuels. Recently, a Gd-alloyed duplex stainless steel demonstrated the possibility of fabrication and under development for an advanced neutron absorber and structural material as well. In this study, the effect of Gd alloyed neutron absorber on thermal performance of a spent fuel cask has been studied. The thermal properties of Gd-alloyed DSS was measured using the specimens provided by KITEC. The effect of Gd-alloyed duplex stainless steel adoption was analyzed for the reference casks, KSC-1 and KORAD-21. The analysis method was verified by comparing the analysis results with the reported values. Their system with Gd-alloyed DSS should remove decay heat with passive cooling. The KSC-1 and KORAD-21 casks were modeled with a 2D axis-symmetry condition and 3D symmetry condition, respectively, using ANSYS FLUENT v17.0. Based on the verified method, thermal performance of KORAD-21 which adopts Gd-alloyed DSS was analyzed. The maximum fuel cladding temperature with Gd-alloyed DSS exceeded allowable temperature of 400 ℃ and it could affect the fuel integrity. Therefore, basket wall thickness and disk thickness were optimized to enhance thermal performance. When the basket wall thickness was reduced, the gap between the basket surface and disk square holes was consequently increased. The increased gap enhanced the upward flow of helium and it improved the decay heat removal. Additionally, disk thickness was optimized to 60mm from 20mm. The increased heat-conducting surface enhanced the conduction heat transfer. As a result, UNIST-version design of the KORAD-21 cask was developed with the 5.0mm basket wall thickness and 60mm disk thickness. Thermal performance of UNIST design cask satisfied thermal requirements in normal operation.