Frederick G. Hammitt

NATURAL CONVECTION FLOW IN LIQUID-METAL MOBILE-FUEL NUCLEAR REACTORS

No directly applicable theoretical or experimental results are available for natural convection in vertical liquidmetal filled ligaments encountered in mobile-fuel fast power reactor concepts. However, it is possible to delineate the general nature of behavior expected with respect to temperature, velocity, and wall heat flux profiles from limiting analyses and available experiments. It is shown that natural convection may be of importance from the viewpoints of perturbation of wall heat flux distribution (a limiting design condition), and motivation of velocities importent as a possible mechanism for mass transport, and hence is also an influence on fission gas disposition. It does not appear that natural convection will substantially affect temperature differentials in the cases of interest. These can be estimated assuming pure conduction. (auth)