Development of effective thermal conductivity models for Reserve Shutdown Control fuel block of prismatic HTGR for hydrogen production

A hydrogen production system coupled to High Temperature Gas-cooled nuclear Reactor (HTGR) is considered to be one of the most promising ways for massive hydrogen production. For the reliability of the coupled system, the safety analysis on the HTGR is to be conducted by a system-scale analysis code. The system-scale analysis code adopts an effective thermal conductivity (ETC) model for a fuel block due to its complex geometry containing large number of coolant holes and nuclear fuel rods. The ETC of the fuel block is crucial to calculate the heat transfer inside the reactor core and prediction of thermal distribution over the reactor core is the most significant for the safety analysis of HTGR. Therefore, the verification of the ETC model that contributes to the prediction is essential. This ETC model based on Maxwell's theory shows an inaccurate prediction when the configuration of the composite materials is not homogeneous. Since the geometry of Reserve Shutdown Control (RSC) fuel block of HTGR is not homogeneous due to a large RSC hole, the ETC model for RSC fuel block should be developed to improve the accuracy and reliability of the reactor system analysis code. In this study, the two ETC models for the RSC fuel block have been developed by the thermal network modeling. Computational fluid dynamic simulations with a real geometry were performed to evaluate the accuracy of the ETC models for the RSC fuel block. The comparative result between CFD analysis and the ETC model shows that the newly developed model predicts the effective thermal conductivity of RSC fuel block more accurately than the previous model.