Improvement the value of sodium void reactivity effect of the fast neutron reactor by the instrumentality of the Monte Carlo code

9/01/2015 2015 - #02 Physics and technology of nuclear reactors

Maslov P.A. Matveev V.I. Malysheva I.V.

https://doi.org/10.26583/npe.2015.2.12

It is necessary to have value of sodium void reactivity effect (SVRE) around zero (no more than ~0.3%) for provide safety sodium fast reactor in ULOF type BDBA. In turn, the value of SVRE depends on the fuel burn-up – the more fuel burn-up, the greater the SVRE. The study provides the analysis of limitation fuel burn-up in the core of the big power reactor with a view to SVRE safety.

The model of the core sodium fast reactor with a big thermal power and with breeding blanket has been chosen for study. Two types of fuel have been considered – mixed oxide fuel and mixed nitride fuel.

The article considers transitional mode operation of the reactor from the start state to the steady-state overload, where core passes various stages of fuel burn-up. SVRE calculations have been carried out by two codes: – TRIGEX – engineering code for fast reactors neutronics calculations in the diffusion approximation and three-dimensional GEX-Z geometry; – MMKKENO – precision code for reactor characteristics calculation by Monte Carlo method. Heterogeneous description of internal structure of the fuel assemblies andcontrol rods has been applied in this code.

The results of calculations show that the value of SVRE exceeds required value twice for MOX fuel at the end of 3-rd micro campaign. For mixed nitride fuel the value of SVRE exceeds required at the end of 3-rd micro campaign also, however, this excess considerable less than for oxide fuel.

References

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fast reactors mixed oxide fuel mixed nitride fuel sodium void reactivity effect fuel burn-up transitional mode operation safety

Link for citing the article: Maslov P.A., Matveev V.I., Malysheva I.V. Improvement the value of sodium void reactivity effect of the fast neutron reactor by the instrumentality of the Monte Carlo code. Izvestiya vuzov. Yadernaya Energetika. 2015, no. 2, pp. 117-125; DOI: https://doi.org/10.26583/npe.2015.2.12 (in Russian).