Abstract
For the purpose of performing high-temperature irradiation of the fuel rod in the low-temperature and low-pressure water-cooled research reactor and obtaining the post-irradiation performance parameters of the fuel rod, a fuel rod irradiation test device was designed based on the High Flux Engineering Test Reactor (HFETR). The key parameters such as thickness of the lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) alloy layer, structure of the cooling water flow channel, the structure of throttle plug, and flow rate of the cooling water were determined. The flow field distribution in the test section was obtained by numerical simulation method. The stress values of the device under design and accident conditions were obtained by finite element analysis. The test of hydraulic characteristic out-reactor were performed by using the simulation device. The results show that, the average velocity of the cooling water outside the test assembly was 1.9 m/s under the design flow rate, which met the cooling requirement when the linear power of the fuel rod was 280 W/cm. The structure of the test device met the strength requirement with sufficient safety margin. In the experiment out-reactor, the test device was able to cover the design value of 4.03 t/h on the differential pressure of 200 kPa and 300 kPa with coolant flow rate adjustment ranges of 0.73 t/h ∼ 4.28 t/h and 1.05 t/h ∼ 5.25 t/h, which met the test requirements. The device designed in this paper can be used to perform the irradiation test in research reactor, which provides guarantee for the research and development of new type of the fuel.
