Experimental Evaluation of the Thermal Performance of a Water Shield for a Surface Power Reactor

Water based reactor shielding is being investigated for use on initial lunar surface power systems. A water shield may lower overall cost (as compared to development cost for other materials) and simplify operations in the setup and handling. The thermal hydraulic performance of the shield is of significant interest. The mechanism for transferring heat through the shield is natural convection. Natural convection in a 100 kWt lunar surface reactor shield design is evaluated with 2 kW power input to the water in the Water Shield Testbed (WST) at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The experimental data from the WST is used to validate a CFD model. Performance of the water shield on the lunar surface is then predicted with a CFD model anchored to test data. The experiment had a maximum water temperature of 75 °C. The CFD model with 1/6‐g predicts a maximum water temperature of 88 °C with the same heat load and external boundary conditions. This difference in maximum temperature does not greatly affect the...