Hydraulic modeling of the Jules Horowitz Reactor: Mass flow split between 36 fuel elements

The newest European high performance material testing reactor, the Jules Horowitz Reactor, is under construction at the CEA Cadarache research center in southern France. The reactor will support existing and future nuclear reactor technologies and the first criticality is expected to be achieved at the end of this decade. This paper presents Computational Fluid Dynamics hydraulic calculations of the reactor and some results of the side thermal-hydraulic simulation of the fuel element. The main objective of this work is to improve the hydraulic knowledge of the reactor and to present the mass flow distribution between 36 fuel assemblies. Potential improvements for future work are proposed.