An innovative small modular sodium cooled fast reactor called S1 is designed by China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE). As an encapsulated nuclear source with thermal power of 3MW, S1 is characterized by small volume, light weight, high safety and sound reliability. The S1 systems adopt modularization, by which the core will be loaded in a factory and filled with sodium, then shipped to the assembled onsite, thus the construction time for S1 can be substantially reduced.
In this paper, the Monte Carlo code MCNP is used to calculate the loading scheme of S1. Considering factory’s special conditions for loading and active chemical property of sodium, a special loading pattern is adopted for S1 — loading fuel first, then sodium filling.
Ensure that the neutron source and detectors are well matched during loading, and detector counting rate is no less than 2cps when only neutron source but no fuel exists in the core. Three positions where the 252Cf neutron source is placed are studied in this paper: (1) at the center of the core; (2) at the middle of outside core plane; (3) at the bottom of outside the reactor vessel. Through MCNP simulation calculations and comparison of large resulting data, it finds the neutron source should be reasonably placed at the bottom of the reactor vessel where 252Cf strength is 105 s−1 neutrons, and the ex-core detectors are distributed symmetrically at the center of outside core plane; the most befitting moderator material of detector surface is methacrylate-C5H8O3. In this paper, 1/N extrapolation method is used during loading and kinds of loading schemes have been studied with reference to the principles of China experimental fast reactor (CEFR) and regulations of relevant research reactors, and 5-batch loading scheme is finally chosen as the optimal loading scheme. S1 is prepared for sodium filling at 250 °C. It shows that neutron flux variation of core can be more reliably monitored when the ex-core detectors are placed about 120cm away from the center core through MCNP simulation calculation. Such arrangement can also meet the monitoring requirements for loading and sodium filling.
