TY - JOUR
T1 - Preliminary control rod lifetime assessment for the versatile test reactor
AU - Zhong, Zhaopeng
AU - Abou-Jaoude, Abdalla
AU - Heidet, Florent
N1 - Funding Information:
The submitted manuscript has been created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, Operator of Argonne National Laboratory (“Argonne”). Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
Funding Information:
The submitted manuscript has been created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, Operator of Argonne National Laboratory (“Argonne”). Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The work reported in this summary is the results of R&D studies supporting a VTR concept, cost, and schedule estimate for DOE-NE to make a decision on procurement in the future. As such, it is pre-decisional.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 American Nuclear Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/6
Y1 - 2019/6
N2 - Preliminary control rod performance and depletion analyses were carried out for the VTR, using the reference VTR core layout and design characteristics. For the basic control rods design assumed, using natural boron, the reactivity worth is about 6000 pcm for the primary rods when the absorber is fresh. The loss of reactivity worth due to the depletion of B4C is about 60 pcm per irradiation cycle. It is observed that both the concentration of B-10 and the CR reactivity worth are roughly linear with the irradiation time. Several alternate design options were analyzed to understand the tradeoffs resulting from using a enriched boron when trying to increase the control rods reactivity worth. It was shown that using the same geometry with enriched B-10 could increase the CR reactivity worth but that the CR reactivity worth is not linear with B-10 enrichment due to the self-shielding effect. It also has several drawbacks, such as reduced core excess reactivity, and shorter control rod lifetime. A mitigation strategy to these drawbacks is to use both natural and enriched boron in the control rod, with the natural boron in the lower region of the pins and the enriched boron in the upper region. This design option can allow increasing the CR reactivity worth significantly, while maintaining all the advantages of natural boron.
AB - Preliminary control rod performance and depletion analyses were carried out for the VTR, using the reference VTR core layout and design characteristics. For the basic control rods design assumed, using natural boron, the reactivity worth is about 6000 pcm for the primary rods when the absorber is fresh. The loss of reactivity worth due to the depletion of B4C is about 60 pcm per irradiation cycle. It is observed that both the concentration of B-10 and the CR reactivity worth are roughly linear with the irradiation time. Several alternate design options were analyzed to understand the tradeoffs resulting from using a enriched boron when trying to increase the control rods reactivity worth. It was shown that using the same geometry with enriched B-10 could increase the CR reactivity worth but that the CR reactivity worth is not linear with B-10 enrichment due to the self-shielding effect. It also has several drawbacks, such as reduced core excess reactivity, and shorter control rod lifetime. A mitigation strategy to these drawbacks is to use both natural and enriched boron in the control rod, with the natural boron in the lower region of the pins and the enriched boron in the upper region. This design option can allow increasing the CR reactivity worth significantly, while maintaining all the advantages of natural boron.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85092166398
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85092166398
SN - 0003-018X
VL - 120
SP - 809
EP - 811
JO - Transactions of the American Nuclear Society
JF - Transactions of the American Nuclear Society
T2 - 2019 Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, ANS 2019
Y2 - 9 June 2019 through 13 June 2019
ER -