The Seismic Analysis Of The Spent Fuel Storage Rack

The Spent Fuel Storage Racks are amongst the most important facilities in the nuclear power plants which keep the fuel in safe positions to avoid the possibility of a "criticality" — a nuclear chain reaction occurring. The Seismic analysis of the Spent Fuel Storage Rack Structure is essential and critical to qualify China to develop the techniques of nuclear power on self-reliance.The thesis article built the mechanical model of the spent fuel storage racks in AP1000 power plant, and employed the software featured with explicit kinetic finite element method to simulate the Spent Fuel Storage Rack Structure subjected to SSE seismic loads to verify the results satisfy the acceptance standard.The responses of a freestanding rack in spent fuel bay under Safe Shutdown Earthquake, or SSE, was highly nonlinear which includes various nonlinear responses such as sliding, overturn, collision, buckling and fluid structure coupling. The design equipped with linear method has been implemented to date with only limited success due to the inaccurate result, only a finite element model based on explicit kinetic which was recently developed for the analysis of spent fuel storage rack can reach an accurate result.This paper also presents a dynamic analysis to the unlikely event of dropping a fuel assembly to demonstrate that the deformation of the rack does not beyond the acceptance of criticality criterion.The result was:1) Using a finite element model based on explicit kinetic for the analysis of the spent fuel storage racks can reach an accurate result.2) The mechanical model was verified that the results satisfy the acceptance standard, and the deformation of the racks does not beyond the acceptance of criticality criterion in dropping event.