Spent nuclear fuels should be safely stored until being disposed and dry storage system is predominantly used to retain the fuels. During long-term storage, there are several mechanisms that could result in the degradation of spent nuclear fuels, and the temperature is the most important parameter to predict and estimate the degradation behaviors. Therefore, thermal analysis to estimate temperatures of spent nuclear fuel and the storage system should be performed to evaluate whether the temperatures exceed safety limit. Recently, thermal hydraulic analysis with CFD codes is widely used to investigate the temperature of spent nuclear fuel in dry storage. Herein, Explicit CFD analysis model is introduced and validated by estimating the thermal hydraulic response of the dry storage system that is Dry Cask Simulator (DCS). Extended Storage Collaborating Program (ESCP) led by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is organized to assess degradation effects of spent nuclear fuel during long-term dry storage, and DCS is the first phase of the program. The dry storage system, containing a single BWR assembly in a canister, was designed to produce validation-quality data for thermal analysis model. ANSYS FLUENT is used to simulate DCS, and the test condition of 0.5 kW decay heat and 100 kPa helium pressure was investigated in this study. In case of peak cladding temperature (PCT), PCT from the experiment was 376 K while that of CFD was 374 K. It implies CFD simulation gives good agreement with experimental measurement. Peak temperatures of channel can, basket, canister and shell predicted by CFD simulation also show good prediction and the discrepancies were less than 7 K while measurements uncertainty was 7 K.

• Doyun Kim(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI)) Corresponding author
• Ju-chan Lee(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI))
• Seunghwan Yu(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI))