Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Sensitivity of a control rod worth estimate to neutron detector position by time-dependent Monte Carlo simulations of the rod drop experiment

  • Jong Min Park (Nuclear Engineering Department, Seoul National University) ;
  • Cheol Ho Pyeon (Institute for Integrated Radiation and Nuclear Science, Kyoto University) ;
  • Hyung Jin Shim (Nuclear Engineering Department, Seoul National University)
  • Received : 2023.06.30
  • Accepted : 2023.11.06
  • Published : 2024.03.25
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Abstract

The control rod worth sensitivity to the neutron detector position in the rod drop experiment is studied by the time-dependent Monte Carlo (TDMC) neutron transport calculations for AGN-201K educational reactor and the Kyoto University Critical Assembly. The TDMC simulations of the rod drop experiments are conducted by the Seoul National University Monte Carlo (MC) code, McCARD, yielding time-dependent neutron densities at detector positions. The detector-position-dependent results of the total control rod worth calculated by the extrapolation, the integral counting, and the inverse methods are compared with the numerical reference using the MC eigenvalue calculations and the experimental results. From these comparisons, it is observed that the total control rod worth can be estimated with a considerable difference depending on the detector position through the rod drop experiment. The proposed TDMC simulation of the rod drop experiment can be applied for searching a better detector position or quantifying a bias for the control rod worth measurement.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No.2022M2D2A1A02063865).

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