Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Possible power increase in a natural circulation Soluble-Boron-Free Small Modular Reactor using the Truly Optimized PWR lattice

  • Steven Wijaya (Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)) ;
  • Xuan Ha Nguyen (Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)) ;
  • Yonghee Kim (Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST))
  • Received : 2022.04.27
  • Accepted : 2022.09.04
  • Published : 2023.01.25
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Abstract

In this study, impacts of an enhanced-moderation Fuel Assembly (FA) named Truly Optimized PWR (TOP) lattice, which is modified based on the standard 17 × 17 PWR FA, are investigated in a natural circulation Soluble-Boron-Free (SBF) Small Modular Reactor (SMR). Two different TOP lattice designs are considered for the analysis; one is with 1.26 cm pin pitch and 0.38 cm fuel pellet radius, and the other is with 1.40 cm pin pitch and 0.41 cm fuel pellet radius. The NuScale core design is utilized as the base model and assumed to be successfully converted to an SBF core. The analysis is performed following the primary coolant circulation loop, and the reactor is modelled as a single channel for thermal-hydraulic analyses. It is assumed that the ratio of the core pressure drop to the total system pressure drop is around 0.3. The results showed that the reactor power could be increased by 2.5% and 9.8% utilizing 1.26/0.38 cm and 1.40/0.41 cm TOP designs, respectively, under the identical coolant inlet and outlet temperatures as the constraints.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korean Government (MSIP) (NRF-2016R1A5A1013919).

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