Nuclear graphite wear properties and estimation of graphite dust production in HTR-10

The issue of the graphite dust has been a research focus for the safety of High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs), especially for the pebble bed reactors. Most of the graphite dust is produced from the wear of fuel elements during cycling of fuel elements. However, due to the complexity of the motion of the fuel elements in the pebble bed, there is no systematic method developed to predict the amount the graphite dust in a pebble bed reactor. In this paper, the study of the flow of the fuel elements in the pebble bed was carried out. Both theoretical calculation and numerical analysis by Discrete Element Method (DEM) software PFC3D were conducted to obtain the normal forces and sliding distances of the fuel elements in pebble bed. The wearing theory was then integrated with PFC3D to estimate the amount of the graphite dust in a pebble bed reactor, 10 MW High Temperature gas-cooled test Reactor (HTR-10).