The understanding of critical heat flux is crucial for the safety of nuclear reactors. To this end, many studies have been carried out to understand various aspects of the boiling crisis phenomenon. Power transient critical heat flux trigger mechanisms is a small category that is relatively under-studied and not well...
Power transient boiling has been studied for decades, however, the mechanistic understanding of phenomena which occur during such an event remains incomplete. Due to a dearth of systematic researches, the information of studied phenomenon, detailed physics and applicable hypothesis are very limited. Transient critical heat flux (CHF) is paramount in...
The Modular High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (MHTGR) is a graphite moderated reactor that utilizes helium as its coolant. One consideration of importance is how the MHTGR will perform during a Depressurized Conduction Cooldown (DCC) accident, which generally can be divided into three phases: depressurization, air ingress, and natural circulation. After...
This research presents an analysis of thermal stratification in the reactor cold leg of the Advanced Plant Experiment-Combustion Engineering (APEX-CE). This phenomenon may be a precursor leading to a Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) event in a nuclear power plant. This work was performed in support of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory...
The Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) has two possible core configurations, a hexagonal prismatic and a pebble bed. It is essential that an experimental facility be built for the validation of computer codes for the safe operation of the VHTR. The scaling of the prismatic core configuration has been analyzed...
Downward flow opposing mixed convection conditions have been studied using the FLUENT CFD code. This work was comprised of two primary objectives. The first was to study core channel flow reversal susceptibility in the Gas Reactor Test Section (GRTS) at low flow conditions. The second objective was the development of...
Nuclear material monitoring systems have long been established at ports of entry. However, there are no standard systems for monitoring points of interest within the country. Therefore, the use of a network of radiation sensors deployed throughout an area of interest is being investigated within this thesis. Before full scale...
Nuclear fuel management is an optimization problem on many levels. Finding “viable” solutions for the core reload design problem is difficult without expert knowledge and software automation. Small modular reactors with a shared used fuel pool demonstrate a novel opportunity for fuel cycle optimization.
A Python package was developed and...
Sodium Cooled Fast Reactors (SFR) are complex and expensive due to high operating temperatures and neutron flux which pose technical challenges for these reactors. To overcome these challenges with SFRs, research and development of small scale and large-scale facilities are needed to bridge the gap in understanding. Scaling analyses develop...
The reactivity-initiated accident (RIA) accident has stirred wide interest for the need of designing advanced and high tolerance fuels for next generation nuclear power plants. For pressurized water reactors (PWRs), the accidentally induced reactivity pulse adds transient energy input to the fuel. As a result, boiling may happen locally. Boiling...