Investigation of Thermal Hydraulics of a Nuclear Reactor Moderator

A three-dimensional numerical modeling of the thermo hydraulics of Canadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) nuclear reactor is conducted. The moderator tank is a Pressurized heavy water reactor which uses heavy water as moderator in a cylindrical tank. The main use of the tank is to bring the fast neutrons to the thermal neutron energy levels. The moderator tank compromises of several bundled tubes containing nuclear rods immersed inside the heavy water.;MTF tests are conducted using heating elements to heat tube surfaces. This is different than the real reactor where nuclear radiation is the source of heating which results in a volumetric heating of the heavy water. The data recorded inside the MTF tank have shown levels of fluctuations in the moderator temperatures and requires in depth investigation of causes and effects.;The purpose of the current investigation is to determine the causes for, and the nature of the moderator temperature fluctuations using three-dimensional simulation of MTF with both (surface heating and volumetric heating) modes. In addition, three dimensional simulation of full scale actual moderator tank with volumetric heating is conducted to investigate the effects of scaling on the temperature distribution. The numerical simulations are performed on a 24-processor cluster using parallel version of the FLUENT 12. During the transient simulation, 55 points of interest inside the tank are monitored for their temperature and velocity fluctuations with time.;It is important to keep the water temperature in the moderator at sub-cooled conditions, to prevent potential failure due to overheating of the tubes. Because of difficulties in measuring flow characteristics and temperature conditions inside a real reactor moderator, tests are conducted using a scaled moderator in moderator test facility (MTF) by Chalk River Laboratories of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (CRL, AECL).