Imperial College London
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DrChrisCooling

Central Faculty, Graduate School

Senior Teaching Fellow- Programming Skills Lead
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 1251c.cooling10

 
 
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Location

 

Sherfield BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Jones:2022:10.1016/j.pnucene.2022.104460,
author = {Jones, G and Cooling, CM and Williams, MMR and Eaton, MD},
doi = {10.1016/j.pnucene.2022.104460},
journal = {Progress in Nuclear Energy},
title = {Wetting-induced volumetric collapse of UO2 powder beds and theconsequence on transient nuclear criticality excursions},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2022.104460},
volume = {154},
year = {2022}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Mathematical and computational models are proposed to simulate wetting-induced volumetric collapse of fissile powder beds. Slumping, nuclear thermal hydraulics, radiolytic gas, and steam production models are coupledwith point neutron kinetics to investigate transient nuclear criticality excursions in two 5-wt% enriched UO2 fissile powder beds with varying levels of wetting-induced volumetric collapse. The two beds are distinguishedby their mean powder particle size of 30 μm and 100 μm. For the UO2 powder beds modelled, the re-distribution of UO2 powder and moderator due to slumping introduced a negative reactivity into the system. This increasedthe amount of time taken for a delayed critical state to be reached once infiltration began, and also reduced the total fission energy generated over the course of the simulated transient. The total fission energy generatedranged from 42 MJ to 48 MJ 100 seconds after the initial nuclear criticality excursion was observed for the 30 μm sized UO2 powder bed. The fission energy of the larger sized powder bed (100 μm), varied from 42 MJ to 57 MJ. Larger discrepancies between the slumped and un-slumped initial peak power are predicted. Peak powers varied from 29.2 MW to 106 MW for the smaller-sized powder particles, whereas for larger particles, the peak powers varied from 255 MW to 501 MW.
AU  - Jones,G
AU  - Cooling,CM
AU  - Williams,MMR
AU  - Eaton,MD
DO  - 10.1016/j.pnucene.2022.104460
PY  - 2022///
SN  - 0149-1970
TI  - Wetting-induced volumetric collapse of UO2 powder beds and theconsequence on transient nuclear criticality excursions
T2  - Progress in Nuclear Energy
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2022.104460
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/100840
VL  - 154
ER  -
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