Governor’s Chair Professor Brian Wirth is the principal investigator for a project that is receiving a $1.25 million Phase II continuation award from the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program.
Details on the Project
Wirth and Associate Professor Nick Brown are collaborating on the project with faculty from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and North Carolina State.
The focus of the project—Multi-physics fuel performance modeling of TRISO-bearing fuel in advanced reactor environments—is to develop and validate coupled multi-physics tristructural isotropic (TRISO) fuel performance models for high temperature gas cooled reactors, including both pebble bed modular high temperature gas cooled reactors (mHTGRs), microreactors, and prismatic microreactors.
The project builds upon the group’s recent work that was focused on pebble bed fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactors (FHRs), such as the Kairos Hermes test reactor, and historical prismatic mHTGR designs.
How the Models Will be Used
The multi-physics models will be used to evaluate reactor performance and safety characteristics, and feed an envelope of operational and accident conditions to fuel performance modeling using the BISON code to predict fuel behavior and to identify operational safety margins for fuel design that supports reactor licensing.
The group’s work will inform the licensing process regarding reactor performance and safety characteristics, fuel performance, and fuel safety during operating, transient, and accident scenarios for high-temperature gas cooled reactors. This includes developing a mechanistic model for the effect of the fission product palladium on the chemical degradation of the silicon carbide layer of the TRISO fuel particles and their failure probability due to the concomitant impacts of power history and burnup during normal operation, anticipated operational occurrences, and accidents.
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)