• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.477-484
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• 2020

The control rod drive mechanism needs to be debugged after reactor fresh fuel loading. It is of great importance to monitor the subcriticality of this process accurately. A modified method was applied to the subcriticality monitoring process, in which only a single control rod cluster was fully withdrawn from the core. In order to correct the error in the results obtained by Neutron Source Multiplication Method, which is based on one point reactor model, Monte Carlo neutron transport code was employed to calculate the fission neutron distribution, the iterated fission probability and the neutron flux in the neutron detector. This article analyzed the effect of a coarse mesh and a fine mesh to tally fission neutron distributions, the iterated fission probability distributions and to calculate correction factors. The subcriticality before and after modification is compared with the subcriticality calculated by MCNP code. The modified results turn out to be closer to calculation. It's feasible to implement the modified NSM method in large local reactivity addition process using Monte Carlo code based on 3D model.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.155-163
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• 2007

To insure nuclear reactor safety, the reactivity of control rods should be calculated by measuring the criticality of reactor core and it is regularly performed during the annual physics test period. Also, the core criticality should be monitored during the start-up operation to avoid reactivity induced accidents. Many research works on control rod reactivity measurement and subcriticality measurement have been accomplished throughout the world for decades and recently a new method named "Modified Neutron Source Multiplication Method (MNSM)" was proposed in Japan which is known to be improved overcoming limitations of traditional Neutron Source Multiplication Method (NSM). In this study, MNSM was tested in calculation of subcriticalities and in evaluation of application validity using the educational reactor in Kyung Hee University, AGN-201. For this study, a revised nuclear data library and a neutron transport code system TRANSX - PARTISN were established. Correction factors for various control rod positions were produced using the k-effective values and the corresponding flux distributions and adjoint flux distributions. Experimental values of the core criticality were obtained using the neutron count rates of the BF3 proportional counters. The results showed that the expected reactivity worth of control rods by MNSM agreed well with the theoretical values and the correction factors contributed much for this purpose.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.155-156
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• 2005