Development of Monte Carlo-based pebble bed reactor fuel management code

Setiadipura, Topan; Obara, Toru

doi:10.1016/j.anucene.2014.04.010

Cited by 20 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The calculation and coupling method used in this study is the same as the method applied in MCPBR code [12]. The heavy metal burnup chain used in this calculation, as shown in Fig.…”

Section: Calculational Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The geometrical model is divided into 20 regions in the axial direction and 5 regions in the radial direction. This region mesh dimension is chosen by considering the needed calculation accuracy and the computational time [12]. This model is acceptable, in particular for preliminary design study, due to the low neutron flux at the bottom of the core as also performed in other PBR core analysis [6,8].…”

Section: Calculational Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The phases prior to the equilibrium phase are sometime jointly called pre-equilibrium phase. The core performance of the PBR design is usually represented by the performance of the core at the equilibrium, hence equilibrium calculation is important and practically the first phase in designing the PBR core [12].…”

Section: Design Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preliminary Neutronic Design of High Burnup OTTO Cycle Pebble Bed Reactor

2015

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The pebble bed type High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) is among the interesting nuclear reactor designs in terms of safety and flexibility for cogeneration applications. In addition, the strong inherent safety characteristics of the pebble bed reactor (PBR) which is based on natural mechanisms improve the simplicity of the PBR design, in particular for the Once-Through-Then-Out (OTTO) cycle PBR design. One of the important challenges of the OTTO cycle PBR design, and nuclear reactor design in general, is improving the nuclear fuel utilization which is shown by attaining a higher burnup value. This study performed a preliminary neutronic design study of a 200 MWt OTTO cycle PBR with high burnup while fulfilling the safety criteria of the PBR design.The safety criteria of the design was represented by the per-fuel-pebble maximum power generation of 4.5 kW/pebble. The maximum burnup value was also limited by the tested maximum burnup value which maintained the integrity of the pebble fuel. Parametric surveys were performed to obtain the optimized parameters used in this study, which are the fuel enrichment, per-pebble heavy metal (HM) loading, and the average axial speed of the fuel. An optimum design with burnup value of 131.1 MWd/Kg-HM was achieved in this study which is much higher compare to the burnup of the reference design HTR-MODUL and a previously proposed OTTO-cycle PBR design. This optimum design uses 17% U-235 enrichment with 4 g HM-loading per fuel pebble.

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“…The calculation and coupling method used in this study is the same as the method applied in MCPBR code [12]. The heavy metal burnup chain used in this calculation, as shown in Fig.…”

Section: Calculational Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Calculational Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preliminary Neutronic Design of High Burnup OTTO Cycle Pebble Bed Reactor

2015

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“…Equilibrium and safety analysis of RDE was performed using a finite difference based analysis with a specific method to model the fuel movement in the core [2] [4]. A Monte Carlo (MC) based analysis for a Once-Through-Then-Out (OTTO) fuel refueling of PBR called MCPBR [5] is already developed. However, it cannot perform a multi-pass refueling scheme, which is applied in RDE.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Criticality Analysis of HTR-10 using an Open Source Monte Carlo code OpenMC

Mahfudin

Setiadipura

2020

Jurnal Pengembangan Energi Nuklir

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As one of advance nuclear reactor design, capability to model and analyze the pebble bed reactor is important. Availability and capability of an accurate open source and open access software for pebble bed reactor analysis is strategic. It can broaden the involvement of more student and researcher which finally may improve the research and development in this field. Current study aim to develop the pebble bed core model and perform a criticality study of HTR-10 core design. This study exploit the capability of openMC software to model a double heterogenety geometry using a TRISO Pack Model Building based on random sequential packing and closed random packing. Physical parametric surveys of the developed model show an expected results in which the model able to reflect the negative reactivity feedback of HTR-10 design. The critical height of HTR-10 model with helium from current model, VSOP, and MCNP are 125.881 cm, 125.804 cm, 126.116 cm, respectively. A code-to-code criticality analysis comparison of current model with VSOP and MCNP code reported by INET shows a good comparison and suggest that current method can be used for further pebble bed analysis.

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“…Deterministic codes as VSOP (Very Superior Old Programs) [5] and PEBBED [6], both based on the diffusion approximation, were developed in the past to track batches of pebbles in successive layers of simplified core geometries. With the advent of stochastic approaches, Monte Carlo-based codes as MCPBR [7] have been investigated because of their ability to discard the diffusion approximation and model the double heterogeneity and the randomly packed pebble-bed typical of HTR cores.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical Burnup Distribution of Moving Pebbles in HTR-PM Reactor

Vitullo

Krepel

Kalilainen

et al. 2018

Volume 9: Student Paper Competition

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In the pebble-bed high temperature reactor under construction in China, called HTR-PM, the spherical fuel elements continuously flow downward in the cylindrical core. After the discharge, the burnup of each pebble is checked at the core outlet and, according to the achieved burnup level, the pebble might be disposed or reinserted into the upper section of the core, distributing randomly in the radial direction and defining a variable number of passes necessary to achieve the average maximum burnup of 90 MWd/kgU. Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations have been carried out to achieve a clear understanding of the movement of 420,000 fuel pebbles in the HTR-PM core. At the same time, neutronic properties have been investigated for a single pebble and for the full core with Serpent 2 Monte Carlo code in order to perform a parametrization of the one-group microscopic cross sections at the core-level. The pebble movement has been coupled with the neutronic behavior of a single pebble in a dedicated burnup script called Moving Pebble Burnup (MPB), developed in Matlab. 3,000 single pebble burnup histories were simulated to obtain sufficient statistics and insight on the burnup process in the HTR-PM. The decrease of the average burnup gained per single pass implies that a miss-handling of recirculated fuel elements is unlikely to lead to exceedance of the maximum allowed burnup of 100 MWd/kgU. Furthermore, the core demonstrates a self-compensation effect of burnup, meaning that it always compensates burnup under- or over-runs in the successive passes. Finally, it is possible to conclude that the fuel cycle of the HTR-PM, as it has been laid out, is well-designed and feasible.

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Development of Monte Carlo-based pebble bed reactor fuel management code

Cited by 20 publications

References 9 publications

Preliminary Neutronic Design of High Burnup OTTO Cycle Pebble Bed Reactor

Preliminary Neutronic Design of High Burnup OTTO Cycle Pebble Bed Reactor

Criticality Analysis of HTR-10 using an Open Source Monte Carlo code OpenMC

Statistical Burnup Distribution of Moving Pebbles in HTR-PM Reactor

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