Modelling of thermal hydraulics in a KAROLINA calorimeter for its calibration methodology validation

Results of numerical calculations of heat exchange in a nuclear heating detector for nuclear reactors are presented in this paper. The gamma radiation is generated in nuclear reactor during fission and radiative capture reactions as well as radioactive decay of its products. A single-cell calorimeter has been designed for application in the MARIA research reactor in the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) in Świerk near Warsaw, Poland, and can also be used in the Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR), which is under construction in the research centre in Cadarache, France. It consists of a cylindrical sample, which is surrounded by a gas layer, contained in a cylindrical housing. Additional calculations had to be performed before its insertion into the reactor. Within this analysis, modern computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods have been used for assessing important parameters, for example, mean surface temperature, mean volume temperature, and maximum sample (calorimeter core) temperature. Results of an experiment performed at a dedicated out-of-pile calibration bench and results of numerical modelling validation are also included in this paper.