• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.2874-2879
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• 2020

Due to excess reactivity, fresh nuclear fuel often contains burnable poisons. This research looks at six different burnable poisons and their impacts on reactivity, material attractiveness, and waste management. An MCNP simulation of a PWR fuel pin was performed with a fuel burnup of 60 GWd/MTHM to determine when each burnable poison fuel type would decrease below a k_∞ of 1. For determining the plutonium material attractiveness in each burnable poison fuel type, the plutonium isotopic content of the used fuel was evaluated using Bathke's Figure of Merit formula. For the waste management analysis, the thermal output of each burnable poison fuel type was determined through ORIGEN decay simulations at 100 and 300 years after being discharged from the core. The performance of all six burnable poisons varied over the three criteria considered and no single burnable poison performed best in all three considerations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1367-1379
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• 2020

The small modular sodium-cooled fast reactor (SMSFR) is an important component of Generation-IV reactors. The objective of this work is to improve the reactivity control in SMSFR by using innovative systems, including burnable poisons and optimized control rods. SMSFR with MOX fuel usually exhibits high burnup reactivity loss that leads to high excess reactivity and potential fuel melting in control rod withdrawal (CRW) accidents, which becomes an important constraint on the safety and economic efficiency of SMSFR. This work applies two types of burnable poisons in a SMSFR to reduce the excess reactivity. The first one homogenously loads minor actinides in the fuel. The second one combines absorber and moderators in specific assemblies. The influence of burnable poisons on the core characteristics is discussed and integrated into the analysis of CRW accidents. The results show that burnable poisons improve the safety performance of the core in a significant way. Burnable poisons also lessen the demand for the number, absorption ability, and insertion depth of control rods. Two optimized control rod designs with rare earth oxides (Eu₂O₃ and Gd₂O₃) and moderators are compared to the conventional design with natural boron carbide (B₄C). The optimized designs show improved neutronic and safety performance.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 1988

The low leakage leading pattern has features as the placement of some fresh fuel assemblies in the core interior to reduce the neutron fluence on the pressure vessel and to enhance the neutron economics. But as fresh fuel assemblies are loaded in the core interior, the local power tends to exceed safety limit due to the high reactivity of the fresh assemblies. Therefore, a large number of burnable poisons must be utilized in a low leakage scheme to suppress the high assembly power as well as the excess reactivity. In this study the effects of burnable poisons are treated as a perturbation on the power distribution, and the 'Power Sensitivity Coefficient' concept is adopted. An application study is performed for cycle 1 of the Korea Nuclear Unit-7 (KNU-7) to justify the usefulness of the reverse depletion method coupled with the above concept. To obtain the optimal burnable poision distribution at the given burnup step, the linear programming technique is adopted. The result shows maximum 4.5% error in the amount of burnable poisons between the calculated and the reference values. It is concluded that the design methodology which consists of the reverse depletion, the power sensitivity coefficient concept, and the linear programming technique can be used to find the optimal turnable poison distribution.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.3095-3105
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• 2022

Solid Microencapsulated Fuel (SMF) is a type of solid fuel rod design that disperses TRISO coated fuel particles directly into a kind of matrix. SMF is expected to provide improved performance because of the elimination of cladding tube and associated failure mechanisms. This study focused on the neutronics and some of the fuel cycle characteristics of SMF by using OpenMC. Two kinds of SMFs have been designed and evaluated - fuel particles dispersed into a silicon carbide matrix and fuel particles dispersed into a zirconium matrix. A 7×7 fuel assembly with increased rod diameter transformed from the standard NHR200-II 9×9 array was also introduced to increase the heavy metal inventory. A preliminary study of two kinds of burnable poisons (Erbia & Gadolinia) in two forms (BISO and QUADRISO particles) was also included. This study found that SMF requires about 12% enriched UN TRISO particles to match the cycle length of standard fuel when loaded in NHR200-II, which is about 7% for SMF with increased rod diameter. Feedback coefficients are less negative through the life of SMF than the reference. And it is estimated that the average center temperature of fuel kernel at fuel rod centerline is about 60 K below that of reference in this paper.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.146-152
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• 1996

A small power reactor core of 108 MW$\_$th/ was designed with some design constraints: 2 year refueling cycle length, soluble boron free operation, low power density, and proven fuel assembly design - Uljin 3'||'&'||'4 design specifications. CASMO-3 and KINS-3 was used to evaluate operational capability for power level control via control rods. Cycle length, power peaking factor, M.T.C., and power coefficients were also checked. Designed core loaded with KOFAs satisfied all design goals. We found that much more burnable poisons are to be loaded with axial enrichment zoning. Control rod assemblies should be located at every other assemblies with more than 3 banks. Additional shutdown banks are proposed for the safe plant cooldown, which could be located at core periphery.