CFD Analysis of Circumferential Temperature Distribution on Fuel Cladding Surface of China Lead Alloy Cooled Research Reactor (CLEAR-I)

Because of heterogeneity of sub-channels geometry, a circumferential temperature distribution will exit in the fuel cladding surface during operating condition of a nuclear reactor, which will increase the maximum cladding surface temperature (MCST). However, this phenomenon cannot be obtained in single channel or sub-channel analyses approach. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a good method to study this problem. In this paper, the circumferential temperature distribution on the fuel cladding surface of different sub-channels of China Lead-Alloy Cooled Research Reactor (CLEAR-I) were studied using FLUENT 14.0. Obvious circumferential temperature distributions were presented in results and the maximum circumferential temperature difference is 13°C in edge-channels. This study will improve the precision in the MCST calculation of CLEAR-I and be a good guideline to the optimum design of CLEAR-I sub-channels configurations.