Validation of free-convective heat transfer analysis with JUPITER to evaluate air-cooling performance of fuel debris in dry method

Uesawa, Shinichiro  ; Yamashita, Susumu   ; Shibata, Mitsuhiko ; Yoshida, Hiroyuki  

A dry method for fuel debris is proposed for decommissioning of TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi NPS. However, air cooling performance has not yet been strictly evaluated for the fuel debris. We have evaluated the air-cooling performance of the fuel debris in the dry method by using JUPITER. Because the JUPITER can simulate melt relocation behavior of a reactor core, we can estimate air cooling performance for debris in consideration of the distribution and the structure of debris. In this paper, the validation of the free-convective heat transfer analysis of JUPITER were performed to evaluate the air-cooling performance of fuel debris in the dry method by using JUPITER. As the preliminary analysis, JUPITER was compared with OpenFOAM for simple configurations. The comparison proved that JUPITER can calculate the vertical temperature distribution as well as OpenFOAM on the condition of the lower heating amount. In the validation, JUPITER was compared with the heat transfer experiments of free convection in air adjacent to an upward-facing horizontal heating surface. The comparison proved that JUPITER was in good agreement with the experiment on the condition of the lower heating-surface temperature. The result indicated that JUPITER is a helpful numerical method to evaluate the free-convective heat transfer of the fuel debris in the dry method.