Control Strategy of Soluble Boron-Free Operation for a Small PWR

Elimination of soluble boron will be a challenge to reactor operation for PWR. This paper is to promote a control strategy of soluble boron-free operation for a small PWR, through selection of burnable poison (BP), BP loading and control rod loading, based on the reactivity balance and manage requirement. The analysis for on-power operation and shutdown condition indicated that this strategy could be suitable for long-term and short-term reactivity and power distribution control for soluble boron-free operation.

The Effect of Minor Actinide Transmutation on Temperature Coefficient in PWR

Minor actinides in the spent fuel have strong radiotoxicity and very long half-life, the the properly dispose of spent fuel is indispensible to the development of nucler energy. Generally,we dispose the spent fuel by geological burying. But it can not compeletly solve the problem. Neutron transmutation is the only way to shorten the half-life of radioactive nuclides, under the irradiation of neutron MA nuclide will capture neutron or fission, and translate into the short lived nuclide or something valued nuclide. Reactivity temperature coefficient is an improtant safety parameter in nuclear reactor physics.In the reactor design, for the safely operation of reactor, reactivity temperature coefficient must be be negative. The introduction of MA in the PWR must have interference to the temperature coefficient. This paper mainly studied the influence of PWR transmutation minor actinide on the temperature coefficient.

Multi-Dimensional Shield Performance Analysis Through an Even Parity Based “Contributon” Transport Concept

In this paper we present an even parity approach for deriving the detector response flux. Forward and adjoint angular fluxes, ψ(r,Ω) and ψ†(r,Ω) obtained from the K+[ψ+] and K†+[ψ†+] variational principles are used to determine the spatial channels in shielding materials. These spatial channels clearly show the dose rate passages from the source to the detecting point, hence weak and strong points of the shielding design is illustrated thereafter. Spatial and angular components of the fluxes are approximated using the finite element method (FEM) as well as the spherical harmonics polynomials (SHP), respectively. By the adjoint weighted even parity flux, we can obtain the multigroup response fluxes over arbitrary shaped multidimensional geometries with less computational efforts compared to full parity approaches. A number of test are examined via the code ENTRANS, developed for Even parity Neutron TRANSport calculations. Results confirm ability and robustness of the proposed approach.

The Effect of MA Transmutation in the PWR on Fuel Cycle

The minor actinides (MA) is important nuclides in the spent fuel which is bad for human ecological environment. Pressurized water reactor (PWR) is the main reactor type at commercial operation around world. It is important to find the appropriate loading patterns when introducing minor actinides to the PWR core. In this paper, we study the effect of MA transmutation in the PWR on fuel cycle. First, we use the MCNP program to simulate the model of PWR and the effective multiplication factor.Then,the MA is introduced into core in different ways and mass to simulate the effective multiplication factor. In conclusion,without considering chemical skim control and control rods, we change the thickness of the MA, until the keff closes to 1, We find that loading minor actinides to burnable poison rods for transmutation is an optimal minor actinide loading pattern.

Refined Algorithm for Solving High-Order Harmonics of Multi Group Neutron Diffusion Equation

In recent years, high order harmonic (or eigenvector) of neutron diffusion equation has been widely used in on-line monitoring system of reactor power. There are two kinds of calculation method to solve the equation: corrected power iteration method and Krylov subspace methods. Fu Li used the corrected power iteration method. When solving for the ith harmonic, it tries to eliminate the influence of the front harmonics using the orthogonality of the harmonic function. But its convergence speed depends on the occupation ratio. When the dominant ratios equal to 1 or close to 1, convergence speed of fixed source iteration method is slow or convergence can’t be achieved. Another method is the Krylov subspace method, the main idea of this method is to project the eigenvalue and eigenvector of large-scale matrix to a small one. Then we can solve the small matrix eigenvalue and eigenvector to get the large ones. In recent years, the restart Arnoldi method emerged as a development of Krylov subspace method. The method uses continuous reboot Arnoldi decomposition, limiting expanding subspace, and the orthogonality of the subspace is guaranteed using orthogonalization method. This paper studied the refined algorithms, a method based on the Krylov subspace method of solving eigenvalue problem for large sparse matrix of neutron diffusion equation. Two improvements have been made for a restarted Arnoldi method. One is that using an ingenious linear combination of the refined Ritz vector forms an initial vector and then generates a new Krylov subspace. Another is that retaining the refined Ritz vector in the new subspace, called, augmented Krylov subspace. This way retains useful information and makes the resulting algorithm converge faster. Several numerical examples are the new algorithm with the implicitly restart Arnoldi algorithm (IRA) and the implicitly restarted refined Arnoldi algorithm (IRRA). Numerical results confirm efficiency of the new algorithm.

Molecular Dynamics Simulation of the Sputtering of Graphite due to Bombardment With Deuterium and Tritium in Fusion Environment

The sputtering of graphite due to the bombardment of hydrogen isotopes is one of the critical issues in successfully using graphite in the fusion environment. In this work, we use molecular dynamics method to simulate the sputtering by using the LAMMPS. Calculation results show that the peak values of the sputtering yield are located between 25 eV to 50 eV. After the energy of 25 eV, the higher incident energy cause the lower carbon sputtering yield. The temperature which is most likely to sputter is about 800 K for hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Before the 800 K, the sputtering rates increase when the temperature increase. After the 800 K, they decrease with the temperature increase. Under the same temperature and energy, the sputtering rate of tritium is bigger than that of deuterium, the sputtering rate of deuterium is bigger than that of hydrogen.

Application of the Burnable Poison in the Design of Space Nuclear Reactor

The previous research showed that the application of burnable poison was helpful to improve the criticality safety of space nuclear reactor (SNR). In order to analyze the worth of burnable poison in the SNR’s design, a model of homogeneous reactor had firstly been built based on the design of SAFE400. Comparing its difference with the real design of SAFE400 through criticality calculation, the precise of our model had been verified. Then the influence of the criticality parameters and immersion accident character parameters for this model had been analyzed for the application of the different burnable poisons (such as samarium, europium or gadolinium). The calculation results had shown that the application of the most of the burnable poisons would soften the neutron spectrum and induced a decrement of reactor’s keff in the beginning of life. However, the immersion accident analysis gave out another result that only the reactor using gadolinium could ensure the criticality safety of reactor after it made its initial keff equal with the design value. Meanwhile, compared with the initial design of SAFE400, in one hand, the burn-up results had shown that the decrement of homogeneous reactor’s reactivity using gadolinium as burnable poison was deceased after the 10 years full power operation; in other hand, its neutron spectrum became more softer with the operation time; and what’s more important, the amount of the burnable poison was not decreased with burn-up during its service life-time. These results implied that the application of the burnable poison (especially for gadolinium) could highly ensure the criticality safety and stable operation of SNR.

Effects of Neutron Irradiation on the Mechanical and Electromagnetic Properties of Reactor Pressure Vessel Steels

The effect of neutron irradiation damage of reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steels is a main failure mode. Accelerated neutron irradiation experiments at 292 °C were conducted on RPV steels, followed by testing of the mechanical, electrical and magnetic properties for both the unirradiated and irradiated steels in a hot laboratory. The results showed that a significant increase in the strength, an obvious decrease in toughness, a corresponding increase in resistivity, and the clockwise turn of the hysteresis loops, resulting in a slight decrease in saturation magnetization when the RPV steel irradiation damage reached 0.0409 dpa; at the same time, the variation rate of the resistivity between the irradiated and unirradiated RPV steels shows good agreement with the variation rates of the mechanical properties parameters, such as nano-indentation hardness, ultimate tensile strength, yield strength at 0.2% offset, upper shelf energy and reference nil ductility transition temperature. Thus, as a complement to destructive mechanical testing, the resistivity variation can be used as a potentially non-destructive evaluation technique for the monitoring of the RPV steel irradiation damage of operational nuclear power plants.

The Sensitivity Simulation of Different Geometric Pretreatment in Method of Characteristics

In reactor core physics analysis,the research about the pre-processing of Method of Characteristic (MOC) including the generation and storage of characteristic line,the progress of calculation and the choosing of different quadrature set.In addition,doing some simulations,which is based on OpenMOC code and C5G7-MOX benchmark,about different parameters (including the track spacing,azimuthal angles and polar angles) and calculated its impacts on the computational efficiency and accuracy.the simulation results are as following:setting the track spacing as 0.1 cm or the azimuthal angle number as 4,the simulation results have better accuracy. Whether choosing the Leonard’s optimum quadrature set or the Tabuchi-Yamamoto quadrature set,the number of polar angles have tiny impact on accuracy.

Performances Analyses of Crud of EPR Fuel Assembly

Taishan European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) is a third generation advanced pressurized water reactor (PWR), which adopts the third generation advanced fuel assembly (AFA-3G-LE) from AREVA for the first time. As suggested by American Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an EPRI level III crud risk assessment is necessary for new type of plants. Because crud induced power offset (CIPS) and crud induced local corrosion (CILC) can lead to axial offset anomaly (AOA) and fuel cladding failure, respectively. A EPRI level III CIPS/CILC risk assessment for Taishan EPR is performed with a new framework of simulation by using sub-channel code FLICA, crud code BOA, and Monte Carlo transport code Tripoli-4. Such framework enables a self-consistent calculation, including a detailed description on neutronics contributed by boron. The validation of present work is confirmed because of the good agreement with the experienced data of EPRI. The results show that AFA-3G-LE has a good performance on crud risk assessment. Even in the worst case, the boron-10 deposition (2.6 g) and the maximum thickness of crud (59 μm) are lower than the low risk threshold, 31.33 g and 75 μm, respectively. Hence, It is expected that Taishan EPR has a very low risk on CIPS and CILC.