Thermal Design of Nuclear Reactors

Exeter

Preface

This book is intended as an introduction to the thermal design of nuclear reactors, either for people starting work in the field or for university students studying the subject. The emphasis is on power reactors, and all the main reactor types are covered. SI units are used.

Basic understanding of many topics in turbulent flow is poor. Consequently empirical correlations of experimental results are used, and many different equations can be proposed for the same phenomenon. In this book no attempt has been made to list all the methods available, instead for most topics just one reasonably accurate and simple method is presented in detail. The more recent of the references at the end of each chapter provide an entry point to the literature for those wishing to pursue a topic further.

The first two chapters contain a minimum of background information. Chapter 1 summarises the reactor physics of the core. Chapter 2 describes the main reactor systems, since the choice of material in Chapters 3 to 9 is strongly influenced by its relevance to the reactor types that are used for power production around the world. The last chapter looks forward to the heat-transfer and fluid-flow problems of a quite diffierent type of reactor, the fusion reactor.

Many of the problems at the ends of the chapters are based on tutorial or examination questions set either to final year Mechanical Engineering students or to students on the MSc course in the Physics and Technology of Nuclear Reactors, and I am grateful to the University of Birmingham for permission to use them. Also I would like to thank the friends and colleagues who have read sections of the typescript and suggested improvements.

CHAPTER 1

Summary of Reactor Physics

Publisher Summary

This chapter discusses the basic principles of reactor physics. It is difficult to understand the need for many components of a nuclear power plant without some appreciation of the way in which the release of nuclear energy is achieved. The source of the heat that is produced in a nuclear power plant is fission. The only naturally occurring isotope that is capable of a self-sustaining fission reaction is uranium-235. In addition to the fission reaction, there are three other types of reactions that are important. The first type is elastic scattering, in which the neutron simply bounces off the nucleus. Total kinetic energy is conserved, which means that the neutron loses kinetic energy. All isotopes exhibit this form of scattering; therefore, the neutrons that escape any other type of reaction steadily slow down. The second type of reaction is inelastic scattering, which is significant in U²³⁸ at energies over about 0.1 MeV. The neutron is absorbed to form a U²³⁹ nucleus, which immediately reverts to U²³⁸ giving out a neutron and a γ-ray. The net effect is that much of the kinetic energy of the neutron is lost to the γ-ray. The third type of reaction is capture, where an isotope of one higher mass number is formed.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter briefly summarises the basic principles of reactor physics. It is difficult to understand the need for many of the components of a nuclear power plant without some appreciation of the way in which the release of nuclear energy is achieved. More detailed information can be found in textbooks on reactor physics, e.g. [1,2].

FISSION

The source of the heat that is produced in a nuclear power plant is fission, i.e. the splitting of a large atom into two smaller atoms. The only naturally occurring isotope that is capable of a self-sustaining fission reaction is uranium-235. One possible reaction when this isotope is bombarded by neutrons is as follows:

(1.1)

The superscripts in this equation are the mass numbers of the various isotopes, i.e. the number of nucleons (neutrons plus protons) in the nucleus. The subscripts are the atomic numbers, i.e. the number of protons in the nucleus, or the number of positive electrical charges. In nuclear reactions the number of nucleons is conserved and electrical charge is conserved.

Equation (1.1) is only one of many possible U²³⁵ fission reactions. The first step is always the formation of a compound nucleus of uranium-236. This immediately splits into two smaller nuclei plus two or three neutrons. As shown in Figure 1.1 there are a large number of possible fission products. The fission products are radioactive, having too many neutrons in the nucleus for stability, and in a few cases decay after a time of the order of a few seconds by emitting a neutron. The usual decay mode is to give out beta particles and gamma rays, i.e. a neutron in the nucleus turns into a proton plus an electron, and the electron (or β-particle) is ejected at high velocity. The β-emitters have half-lives ranging from seconds to years.

Fig. 1.1 Yield of the different fission products as a function of their mass number. Each fission produces two fission product nuclei, that tend to be of unequal size.

The two most important features of the fission reaction are the fact that more neutrons are produced than were required to initiate the reaction, and the large amount of energy released. On average 2.43 neutrons are produced per U²³⁵ fission, so there is the possibility of a self-sustaining chain reaction, at any rate in pure U²³⁵ (natural uranium is 0.7% U²³⁵ and the rest U²³⁸). The total energy released per fission is about 200 MeV and the neutrons produced in fission have an average kinetic energy of about 2 MeV. These quantities are related to SI units by

The distribution of this energy release in time and space is important, and the first step is to know how the energy is divided among the various particles. There are a number of extra points to note. Firstly, the particles produced in equation (1.1) are accompanied by γ-rays emitted instantaneously in fission. Secondly, there are other particles, antineutrinos, given off in association with β-decay. These go straight through the concrete shielding of the reactor, taking their energy with them. They contribute nothing to the heat output of the reactor, and will be ignored in what follows. Thirdly, some of the neutrons in the reactor are captured by other nuclei and do not undergo fission. A small amount of energy is released in the capture reaction, and more later if the new isotope is radioactive. This energy is not produced directly in fission, but must be taken into account in estimating the total heat output. The energy associated with each type of particle is given in Table 1.1.

TABLE 1.1

ENERGY RELEASED PER THERMAL FISSION OF U²³⁵ [3]

The distance that the fission products and the β-particles travel in giving up their energy is short, so all their energy will appear as internal energy in the uranium fuel elements, i.e. the initial kinetic energy is converted to the random energy of movement of the individual atoms in the fuel. The fast neutrons and γ-rays have a range of several cm or more. The core is the region of the reactor containing the fuel, and there must in practice be other materials apart from uranium present, so the energy of the neutrons and γ-rays may appear anywhere in the core. However, the fuel elements are very massive, and most of the remaining energy will end up in the fuel as well. So perhaps 95% of the thermal energy will appear in the fuel, and 5% elsewhere in the core, the precise figures depending on the detailed design.

The next problem is what happens when the reactor is shut down. About 7% of the energy released is associated with the decay of the fission products. This will continue after the fission reactions have ceased, and there is no way of stopping it. While the 7% figure only applies for the first second or two heat will continue to be produced at a lower level indefinitely (equation (7.12)). The cooling system must therefore be capable of operating at a reduced level even when the reactor is shut down and no fission is taking place.

The value of 202.0 MeV for the total energy produced has an error of ± 0.6 MeV, and anyway depends slightly on assumptions made about the structure of the core in estimating the capture contribution, so for most purposes the energy released per fission can be taken as 200 MeV or 3.20 × 10−11 J.

NEUTRON FLUX AND REACTION CROSS-SECTIONS

In practice there will be many other isotopes present in the reactor in addition to U²³⁵, and each of the isotopes is capable of at least two distinct types of nuclear reaction with the neutrons. We need some method of quantifying the probability of a particular reaction occurring, and this is given by the reaction cross-section. The definition of the reaction cross-section is itself bound up with the definition of neutron flux.

Suppose we have a beam of n neutrons per unit volume travelling in the same direction with velocity v. Then the neutron flux is

(1.2)

i.e. it is the number of neutrons striking unit area in unit time.

If this beam encounters a medium containing N atoms per unit volume of a particular isotope, and each atom has a microscopic cross-section for a particular nuclear reaction σ, then the rate of reaction is

(1.3)

events per unit volume per unit time.

It is as if each nucleus presents an area σ to the flow of neutrons, and any neutrons striking this area cause a nuclear reaction. However, σ should not be thought of as the real physical cross-section of the nucleus since σ varies enormously with neutron speed v.

Numerical values of σ turn out to be of the order of 10−28 m², so it is convenient to measure σ in units of barns.

In addition to the microscopic cross-section we have just defined, there is a macroscopic cross-section Σ = σN. So the reaction rate is given by R = ϕΣ.

The neutrons in a reactor are travelling in different directions and at different velocities, and the situation is much more difficult to visualise. The neutron flux is now defined as the number of neutrons crossing unit area perpendicular to their direction of travel per unit time integrated over all directions. Equation (1.3) still applies.

In addition to the fission reaction there are three other types of reaction that are important. There is elastic scattering in which the neutron simply bounces off the nucleus. Total kinetic energy is conserved which means that the neutron loses kinetic energy. All isotopes exhibit this form of scattering, so neutrons that escape any other type of reaction steadily slow down. Also there is inelastic scattering which is significant in U²³⁸ at energies over about 0.1 MeV. The neutron is absorbed to form a U²³⁹ nucleus, which immediately reverts to U²³⁸ giving out a neutron and a γ-ray. The net effect is that much of the kinetic energy of the neutron is lost to the γ-ray. Finally, there is capture, where an isotope of one higher mass number is formed. For example, in U²³⁸ at lower energies:

In this case the neutron is lost to the system.

CRITICALITY

Since the process of separating U²³⁵ from U²³⁸ is very expensive, we can assume that at the start of any nuclear power programme the reactor will contain both isotopes. The problem of obtaining a self-sustaining chain reaction can perhaps best be understood by looking at Fig. 1.2, which shows the main reaction cross-sections for the two isotopes as a function of energy. The enormous range of energy shown can be explained as follows. The fast neutrons produced in fission have an energy of about 2 MeV, and if they are not absorbed in capture or fission reactions they will lose energy in scattering collisions. Their energy does not fall to zero, however; eventually they come into equilibrium with the energies of the nuclei, which themselves have a slight movement due to thermal vibration. This means that the neutrons slow down to an energy of rather under 0.1 MeV, and are then known as thermal neutrons.

Fig. 1.2 Principal neutron reaction cross-sections for uranium.

To simplify the figure some of the cross-sections have been omitted. The elastic scattering cross-sections are a couple of barns and not strongly influenced by the neutron energy. U²³⁵ also has a capture cross-section, which is smaller than its fission cross-section but follows a similar pattern. The variation of the cross-sections with energy is obviously complicated, but can be partly explained by saying that at low energies what matters is the time that the neutron spends in the vicinity of the nucleus. This time is proportional to 1/v where v is the neutron velocity, so there is a range where the cross-sections are proportional to 1/v. At higher energies, corresponding to the peaks on the graph, resonance absorption occurs. The energy available, i.e. the kinetic energy of the neutron plus the energy resulting from the initial capture reaction, is just right to bring the compound nucleus formed to one of its excited energy levels. When this happens the probability of reaction is greatly increased.

The fission process will be self-sustaining, i.e. the reactor will be critical, provided one of the neutrons produced in fission in due course causes another fission reaction. To start with we can dismiss the possibility of a chain reaction in U²³⁸. The fast neutrons resulting from fission are more likely to be inelastically scattered than involved in a U²³⁸ fission, and just one inelastic collision is enough to reduce the neutron energy below the threshold for fission in U²³⁸.

In natural uranium it is difficult to obtain a chain reaction because only 0.7% of the material is U²³⁵. To offset this it is necessary for the U²³⁵ fission cross-section σf(235) to be much larger than the U²³⁸ capture cross-section σc(238). Simplifying the problem slightly by assuming that only two neutrons are produced per fission, i.e. the remaining 0.43 of a neutron is an allowance for capture in U²³⁵ and in the other materials that must in practice be present in the reactor, then one of these two neutrons must cause a fission in U²³⁵ and the other may be captured in U²³⁸.

We require these to be equal, so

The only region of the graph (Fig. 1.2) where the ratio is as high as this is at thermal energies. The problem then is to get the fission neutrons from around 2 MeV to under 1 eV without them being captured in the U²³⁸ resonance region. This can be done if the uranium is distributed in a moderator, a substance that slows the neutrons down without absorbing them significantly. This type of reactor is called a thermal reactor because most of the neutrons are slowed down to thermal energies before they cause fission.

The above argument is for natural uranium, but the conclusion is unchanged if the uranium is enriched to two or three times the natural proportion of U²³⁵. Enrichment does have the practical advantages of allowing more absorption in the moderator and in structural materials, and a longer period before the fuel has to be replaced.

Only with about 20% U²³⁵ (or plutonium in place of the U²³⁵) is it possible to dispense with the moderator. The chain reaction now takes place with the fast neutrons and the reactor is a fast reactor. Up to now only prototype fast reactors have been built; all commercial power reactors are thermal ones.

MODERATORS

The moderator must have a very low capture cross-section, also a high elastic scattering cross-section is desirable. Equally important is the question of how much energy the neutron loses in each collision, which determines the number of collisions required to bring the neutron to thermal energies. A large number of collisions not only increases the chance of capture, it implies a large quantity of moderator. The energy lost in each collision can be analysed quite simply using classical mechanics. If a small object (the neutron) bounces off a large, massive object (the nucleus), and the total kinetic energy of the system is conserved, then the kinetic energy of the small object is only slightly reduced by the collision. The smaller the nucleus the more kinetic energy will be transferred to it. In the extreme case of the nucleus having the same mass as the neutron, and with a direct hit, then all the momentum of the neutron would be transferred to the nucleus, and the neutron would be brought to rest in just one collision. In fact, with hydrogen atoms in the moderator, this could happen, since the mass of the hydrogen nucleus is very nearly equal to that of the neutron. However, hydrogen captures neutrons too strongly for use with natural uranium fuel, so we will consider the other isotopes of low mass number as well. The first six elements in the periodic table are listed in Table 1.2.

TABLE 1.2

ELEMENTS OF LOW MASS NUMBER

Lithium and boron both absorb neutrons strongly; helium only exists as a gas and a prohibitively large volume would be required. Hydrogen, of course, is also a gas, but in the form of water it is possible to obtain a high density of hydrogen atoms (the oxygen does not absorb neutrons significantly). With hydrogen it is worth distinguishing between its two isotopes, 1H¹ and 1H², the first ordinary, or light, hydrogen, the second heavy hydrogen or deuterium, normally given the symbol D. Since heavy hydrogen has a very low neutron capture cross-section it is necessary to consider heavy water, D2O, separately from light water, H2O. Of the remaining elements in Table 1.2 beryllium is a potential moderator material, but it is expensive, toxic and difficult to fabricate. It has not been used in power