The Core Design Modifications for Stirling Thermal-Electric Integrated Micro Reactor

Abstract

Currently a two-step designing method of sequential neutronic physics and Stirling physical analysis was used for a Miniature Integrated nuclear Reactor design with gravity independent Autonomous Circulation (ACMIR). It was proposed in this article to optimize the intermediate/transitive variables of dead volume and heat exchange area/dead volume ratio as much as possible in the first step so that the system objectives in the second step can be better achieved. The ACMIR core was modified from using rod typed fuels to using plate typed fuels, making use of the plated core’s advantages of easy compression of coolant flow channel while maintaining large heat transfer area. As applied to a 40kWt cooperative dual Stirling power system design of ACMIR, the output power and efficiency index of the system had been significantly improved from 981W to 6395W (each Stirling), with efficiency from 7.4% to 26.6%.