Design and analysis of the spent fuel transfer basket for the reprocessing plant

Abstract

BackgroundThe transportation capacity can be enhanced by using transfer basket in the spent fuel pool of a reprocessing plant. At the same time, the safety and economy of the spent fuel reprocessing can be reinforced by the transfer basket.PurposeThis study aims to design transfer basket for typical spent fuel assemblies in China.MethodsBased on the transfer requirements of spent fuel assembly in the reprocessing plant, the basket was designed to carry eight spent fuel assemblies as one time loading. Both criticality safety analysis and seismic analysis were carried out to evaluate the reliability of the basket by using SuperMC and ANSYS codes, respectively.ResultsThe results of criticality safety analysis show that the keff of the spent fuel pool is only 0.906 even if the baskets are closely arranged in the spent fuel pool. The results of seismic analysis show that the maximum stress of the basket is 7.92 MPa and the maximum deformation is only 0.32 mm under the seismic acceleration of 0.3 g.ConclusionsThe above results show that the structure of the basket is reasonable, and meets the basic safety requirements of the transfer basket of a reprocessing plant.

Keywords

• reprocess
• spent fuel
• basket
• fuel assembly