Development of a Steady State Temperature Distribution Code (STD 1.0) for Predicting Thermal-Hydraulics Parameters of MNSR

Abstract

A steady-state temperature distribution code has been developed using Visual Basic 6.0 programming language for the estimation of steady-state temperature distribution in an averaged fuel element of Miniature Neutron Source Reactor. The STD 1.0 code is composed of three parts: Main Menu Window which shows the title of the code, picture of the Nigeria Research Reactor-1 in operation and the link to the other two windows; Radial Temperature Distribution Window, which can be used to simulate the fuel radial temperature distribution as well as the temperature drops across the fuel; and Axial Temperature Distribution Window, which can be used to simulate the axial power and temperature distributions along the fuel element, the maximum power, fuel centerline and cladding outer surface temperatures and where they occur on the fuel element and the outlet temperature. The simulated results from STD 1.0 code were compared with the measured results from NIRR-1 and the prototype MNSR and good agreement between the results was obtained with maximum absolute deviation of the simulated results from the measured values of 4% averaging at 1.42%. Hence the code is capable of predicting the steady-state temperature distributions of MNSRs to a reasonable degree of accuracy.

Keywords: Steady-state, temperature distribution, radial, axial, power, MNSR