Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2023
27th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE PERFORMANCE OF TRISO FUEL AND MOLTEN FLOURIDE SALTS
Submission Author:
Daniel de Souza Gomes , SP , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Daniel de Souza Gomes
Presenter: Daniel de Souza Gomes
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2023.COB2023-0425
Abstract
Public opinion has reached a growing consensus that nuclear energy could be an inflection point for sustainability and mitigating global warming because of the shortage of natural resources in the future. The energy demand suffers a rapid increase and can duplicate up to 2035. In the last sixty years, nuclear energy generation has concentrated efforts on light water reactors with a fleet of 443 units, producing 10% of the world's demand, with expressive radioisotope waste dissemination risk and low efficiency of around 33%. Therefore, nuclear technology faces a significant challenge in combining sustainability and safety operations, joining concepts such as molten salt reactors and very high-temperature designs. The next generation must be economically attractive while meeting high reactor safety and security standards. Since 2002, Generation IV has researched at least six designs to substitute nuclear power plants with forty years of operation. Using graphite-matrix coated-particle fuels, knowledge as TRISO fuel coupled with coolant salt, a mixture of lithium and beryllium fluorides (7LiF-BeF2), commonly called FLiBe. Adding these combinations can avoid large-scale radionuclide release during accident scenarios. Thus, it arose from the fluoride-salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (FHR) design. The heat transfer models applied to nuclear reactors depend on the Prandtl number correlated to coolant and usage conditions. The Prandtl for light water reactors is around 5, helium-cooled reactors are around 0.7, and liquid metals such as lead and lead-bismuth alloys are around 0.01. In contrast, the molten salts, represented by fluorides, show a Prandtl number of about 10-20. Based on Mark 1, pebble-bed fluoride-salt-cooled High-Temperature reactor. Planned in 2016, Mark 1 comprises a conceptual development project at Berkeley. Then, it makes a theoretical analysis of the core reactor, where we review the thermal properties of fuel and coolant. It compares generation-IV reactor designs analysis with other options such as heavy liquid metals as coolants, molten salt reactors, and conventional fuels.
Keywords
TRISO, FLiBe, MSR, FHR, UCO
