Simulation study on candle burnup applied to block-type high temperature gas cooled reactor
✍ Scribed by Yasunori Ohoka; Takashi Watanabe; Hiroshi Sekimoto
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2005
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 453 KB
- Volume
- 47
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0149-1970
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✦ Synopsis
The CANDLE burnup is a new reactor burnup concept, where the distributions of fuel nuclide densities, neutron flux, and power density move with the same constant speed along the core axis from bottom to top (or from top to bottom) of the core and without any change in their shapes. It can be applied easily to a block-type high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR) using an appropriate burnable poison with a high neutron absorption cross section mixed with uranium oxide fuel. In this study, natural gadolinium is used as burnable poison. In the present paper, the simulation of the burnup for the steady state and the startup is performed.
For the steady state simulation with direct solutions of steady state nuclide densities as inputs, the difference between the results of the steady state analysis and the simulation analysis is very small. It confirms that the steady state analysis is correct. When the initial core is constructed from easily available nuclides, the simulation result gives a reactivity change of 1.7% at a burnup time of 0.7 years.