Numerical Study on the Neutronics-Thermal-Mechanics Coupling Characteristics of the Heat Pipe Nuclear Reactor Core

Abstract

A heat pipe nuclear reactor is compact and flexible to supply electricity power to remote areas. In the process of design this reactor, to avoid failure caused by extreme temperature or stress in the reactor core, the calculation of the neutronics, thermal, and mechanics and evaluation of their coupling effect is necessary. In this study, a numerical simulation method on the neutronics-thermal-mechanics coupling developed by the code OpenMC and MOOSE Multiphysics are verified. The results show that the maximum temperature is near the center of the reactor core in both axial and radial direction, while the position of the maximum stress depends on constrain type of the whole model. The results also reveal that the feedback from the thermal field to the nuclear reaction cross section of the neutronics field is slight. This research provides a valuable numerical simulation method for designing the core region of a heat pipe reactor.

Keywords: Heat pipe nuclear reactor, Neutronics-thermal-mechanics coupling, MOOSE Multiphysics, OpenMC