Development of Local Heat Transfer Models for Safety Assessment of Pebble Bed High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor Cores

This paper presents a model developed for determining fuel particle and fuel pebble temperatures in normal operation and transient conditions based on multi-scale modelling techniques. This model is qualified by comparison with an analytical solution in a one-dimensional linear steady state test problem. Comparison is made with finite element simulations of an idealised “two-dimensional” pebble in transient conditions and with a steady state analytical solution in a spherical pebble geometry. A method is presented for determining the fuel temperatures in the individual batches of a multi-batch recycle refuelling regime. Implementation of the multi-scale and multibatch fuel models in a whole-core CFD model is discussed together with the future intentions of the research programme.