Minor actinides impact on basic safety parameters of medium-sized sodium-cooled fast reactor

• Authors: Piotr Darnowski , Nikolaj Uzunow
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

An analysis of the influence of addition of minor actinides (MA) to the fast reactor fuel on the most important safety characteristics was performed. A special emphasis was given to the total control rods worth in order to describe qualitatively and quantitatively its change with MA content. All computations were performed with a homogeneous assembly model of modified BN-600 sodium-cooled fast reactor core with 0, 3 and 6% of MA. A model was prepared for the Monte Carlo neutron transport code MCNP5 for fresh fuel in the beginning-of-life (BOL) state. Additionally, some other parameters, such as Doppler constant, sodium void reactivity, delayed neutron fraction, neutron fluxes and neutron spectra distribution, were computed and their change with MA content was investigated. Study indicates that the total control rods worth (CRW) decreases with increasing MA inventory in the fuel and confirms that the addition of MA has a negative effect on the delayed neutron fraction.

Keywords

EN

fast reactor safety; MCNP5; sodium-cooled fast reactor; nuclear waste transmutation

• Publisher: De Gruyter Open
• Journal: Nukleonika
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 60
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 171-179

Dates

published

1 - 3 - 2015

online

12 - 3 - 2015

accepted

23 - 1 - 2015

received

25 - 4 - 2014

Contributors

author

Piotr Darnowski

• Institute of Heat Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, 21/25 Nowowiejska Str., 00-665, Warsaw, Poland, Tel./Fax: [phone]

author

Nikolaj Uzunow

• Institute of Heat Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, 21/25 Nowowiejska Str., 00-665, Warsaw, Poland, Tel./Fax: [phone]

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/nuka-2015-0034