CHF Enhancement of Advanced 37-Element Fuel Bundles

A standard 37-element fuel bundle (37S fuel bundle) has been used in commercial CANDU reactors for over 40 years as a reference fuel bundle. Most CHF of a 37S fuel bundle have occurred at the elements arranged in the inner pitch circle for high flows and at the elements arranged in the outer pitch circle for low flows. It should be noted that a 37S fuel bundle has a relatively small flow area and high flow resistance at the peripheral subchannels of its center element compared to the other subchannels. The configuration of a fuel bundle is one of the important factors affecting the local CHF occurrence. Considering the CHF characteristics of a 37S fuel bundle in terms of CHF enhancement, there can be two approaches to enlarge the flow areas of the peripheral subchannels of a center element in order to enhance CHF of a 37S fuel bundle. To increase the center subchannel areas, one approach is the reduction of the diameter of a center element, and the other is an increase of the inner pitch circle. The former can increase the total flow area of a fuel bundle and redistributes the power density of all fuel elements as well as the CHF. On the other hand, the latter can reduce the gap between the elements located in the middle and inner pitch circles owing to the increasing inner pitch circle. This can also affect the enthalpy redistribution of the fuel bundle and finally enhance CHF or dry-out power. In this study, the above two approaches, which are proposed to enlarge the flow areas of the center subchannels, were considered to investigate the impact of the flow area changes of the center subchannels on the CHF enhancement as well as the thermal characteristics by applying a subchannel analysis method.