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Summary: Closed type assembly leads to complicated core thermohydraulics which are significant for design and safety analysis in sodium‐cooled fast reactor (SFR). Most of the major phenomena can be dealt with by general parallel channel network and two‐dimensional model for inter‐wrapper flow (IWF) in system code transient thermal‐hydraulic code for analysis of SFR (THACS). A main deficiency left is the overestimation of inter‐assembly heat transfer effect due to lump temperature message that one‐dimensional assembly model can only provide. A methodology was thus developed to compute wall‐subchannel temperature for simulating energy transportation through duct wall. Intra‐assembly thermohydraulics were classified as two mechanisms and non‐dimensional parameter was introduced for characterizing each of them. Ratio between linear heat flux density through hexagonal wrapper surface and pin surface qw/p was employed to account for radial heat transfer. Flow redistribution effect arouse in mixed and natural convection was concretized by a importance symbol of buoyancy force, Richardson number Ri. Two criteria were also proposed for dividing flow state into three parts and specific model for each section was defined. Two validation cases against 3‐D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of China experimental fast reactor whole core and test data from plant dynamics test loop with direct heat exchanger experiment were performed with THACS. Noticeable improvement after incorporation of this model demonstrated its value in system analysis. Although the procedure for parameter computations is geometry related, this method can be reproduced to any type of assembly directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: A thermoelectric analysis of space nuclear power reactor is of great importance to the space reactors development. In this paper, the reactor core model of TOPAZ‐II designed by Soviet Union, including neutronics model, thermal‐hydraulic model, and electrical circuit model, is established based on reasonable assumptions. A system analysis code is developed to analyze the thermoelectric characteristics of the TOPAZ‐II under the condition of steady‐state operation, start‐up procedure, power change mode, and reactor shutdown. The code has been benchmarked with experimental data, and the maximum relative error is 16.6%. Numerical results show that for the steady state, the simulated electrical power is 5.2 kW within the design value range. For transient state, the reactor thermoelectric characteristics are mainly affected by the electrode temperature: (a) For the start‐up procedure, when the emitter temperature increases above 1700 K, electrical system begins to work and reach full power in 5 minutes. (b) For power change mode, the emitter temperature decreases by 5%, while the electrical power decreases by 67%; (c) For reactor shutdown, electrical power reduces to 0 kW as the emitter temperature decreases to 1400 K in 100 seconds. This study provides valuable theoretical supports for the design and analysis of the thermionic space nuclear power reactor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]