Session: 02-14: Structural Evaluation, Performance Assessment, Multiphysics Coupling - IV

Paper Number: 135355

135355 - The Solitary Wave and Advanced Nuclear Energy System 

Abstract: 

Nuclear energy is one class of carbon free energy to prevent global warming. However, conventional light water reactor has very low uranium utilization, less than 1%, and is not sustainable. Conventional fast breed reactor could improve uranium utilization but strongly depend on fuel reprocessing. For advanced nuclear energy system, travelling wave reactor or CANDLE reactor, self-stabilizing criticality waves and self-organizing breeding/burning waves could be considered as solitary wave propagations. Solitary wave naturally arises in many areas of mathematical physics. Solitary wave propagates without any temporal evolution in shape or size when it moves at constant speed and conserves amplitude, shape, and velocity. The neutrons leaking from ignition region are captured by fertile fuel which is subsequently converted the fissile fuel in breeding region. The breeding region is adopted with thorium material but 50% of the heavy metal nuclides are depleted at the end of the lifetime of the reactor. However, relationship between velocity of solitary wave, wave amplitude or neutron flux and the evolution of nuclide has not been revealed.

For the solitary wave, only by retaining the balance between the nonlinear and dispersive effects can the solitary wave be remained. The dispersive effects represent in leakage term in the nonlinear partial differential equation. Consequently, dealing with the nonlinear effects caused by neutron fission and absorption in medium is the key point to produce and propagate the solitary wave.

In this study, according to the perspective of solitary wave, the analytical solution of this advanced nuclear energy system is demonstrated through coupling one group neutron diffusion equation with burnup equation. Usually, nonlinear partial differential equation is difficult to attain the analytical solution. However, if the nonlinear term in above partial differential equation was expanded by Taylor’s series, then the tanh-function method could be applied to solve this partial differential equation. The necessary boundary condition and simplification were adopted to get the analytical solution.

The results demonstrate that the neutron flux is lineally proportional to wave velocity but inversely proportional to fuel density and microscopic absorption cross section. The profile of neutron flux is a bell-shaped solitary wave modified by wave velocity, fuel density and microscopic absorption cross section. In additional, the neutron fluence, the fuel density of ²³⁸U and ²³⁸Pu show as solitary wave. The maximum neutron fluence is independent of wave velocity and depended on the property of medium. The analytical solutions provide important insights into the physical phenomena of advanced nuclear energy system clearly.

Presenting Author: Jin Huang Department of nuclear science and engineering, East China University of Technology

Presenting Author Biography: Jinfeng Huang received Ph.D in XIAMEN university, majored in nuclear engineering. Jinfeng Huang studied at the Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Science, University of Michigan as a visiting scholar. Jinfeng does research in Nuclear Engineering. My research areas are about FCM fuel, reactor physics, Travelling Wave Reactor and so on.

Publication:
1、 Jinfeng Huang, 2022. Solitary wave in advanced nuclear energy system. Nuclear science and engineering 196,
873-885.
2、 Jinfeng Huang, 2022. The CANDLE burnup strategy applied to small modular pressurized water reactor
loading with fully ceramic microencapsulated fuel. KERNTECHNIK 87(2), 158-166.
3、Jinfeng Huang, Jianlong Han, Xiangzhou Cai et al. Breed-and-burn strategy in a fast reactor with optimized
starter fuel. Progress in Nuclear Energy 85 (2015), 11-16.
4、Jin Feng Huang, 2021. Study on the small pressurized water reactor based on fully ceramic
microencapsulated fuel. Proceedings of 2020 28th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering,
ICONE28-63314.
5、Jinfeng Huang, Ning Li, Yaoli Zhang et al. The safety analysis of a small pressurized water reactor utilizing fully
ceramic microencapsulated fuel. Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017), 250-257.
6、Jinfeng Huang, Ning Li, Yaoli Zhang et al. The excess reactivity management in small pressurized water
reactor utilizing fully ceramic microencapsulated fuel. Progress in Nuclear Energy 101 (2017), 251-259.

Authors: