Physical Studies of Burnable Absorbers in Hexagonal Fuel Assembly

We present the result of physical studies for three integral-type burnable absorbers of gadolinia, erbia and IFBA, in the hexagonal fuel assembly. The analysis of nuclear characteristics for gadolinia and IFBA cases shows that the spectrum hardening of hexagonal fuel assembly compared to rectangular one leads to smaller reactivity hold-down worth(RHW) and less change of MTC in the negative direction per insertion of one burnable absorber rod. Erbia case, on the other hand, exhibits reversed trend in RHW and MTC due to the enhanced absorption of large resonance of Erbium at 0.5 eV It turns out to be that Erbia performs best in terms of minimizing the peak pin power and maintaining as more negative MTC as practically attainable during the entire operational phase, and IFBA provides the least residual reactivity penalty at EOC. Therefore, we take Erbium as the suitable burnable absorber and provide optimal designs of 60, 120, 180, 240 and 300 erbia-shimmed hexagonal fuel assemblies with regard to minimizing the peak pin power.