Numerical Simulation of Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer of Supercritical Fluids in Fuel Bundles

A supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) was proposed as a kind of generation IV reactor in order to improve the efficiency of nuclear reactors. Although investigations on the thermal-hydraulic behavior in SCWR have attracted much attention, there is still a lack of CFD study on the heat transfer of supercritical water in fuel channels. In order to understand the thermal-hydraulic behavior of supercritical fluids in nuclear reactors, the local fluid flow and heat transfer of supercritical water in a 37-element fuel bundle has been studied numerically in this work. Results show that secondary flow appears and the cladding surface temperature (CST) is very nonuniform in the fuel bundle. The maximum cladding surface temperature (MaxCST), which is an important design parameter for SCWR, can be predicted and analyzed using the CFD method. Due to a very large circumferential temperature gradient in cladding surfaces of the fuel bundle, the precise cladding temperature distributions using the CFD method is highly recommended.