Scaled Experiment on Flow Characteristics of a Single Area of Spent Fuel Dry-Storage System of HTR-PM1000

Abstract China is promoting the project of a 1000MW high-temperature gas-cooled reactor based on the technology of the pebble-bed module (HTR-PM1000). The spent fuel dry-storage system of HTR-PM1000 is divided into six regions, with each region containing multiple storage silos. The spent fuel canisters are vertically placed in the storage silos, where air is forced or naturally circulated to remove decay heat. Considering the cost of experiments and other factors, a 1/5 scaled experiment was conducted in this paper. The flow distribution and total resistance characteristics of different silos were recorded under the conditions of different fans and canisters loading. In order to eliminate the influence of fan performance on the experiment, two fans were operated at full-load separately, as well as the condition of two fans operating in parallel at full-load. To find the worst case and study the influence of the number of canisters on flow distribution, experiments were conducted for three operating conditions: no-load, full-load, and half-load. The results showed that the trend of silos flow variation was similar between no-load and full-load conditions. Under the half-load condition, the flow decreased with the increase of the number of storage canisters. Additionally, based on the total resistance characteristics, the resistance coefficients under the no-load and full-load conditions were obtained, which matched well with the previously calculated values.