Sensitivity Analysis of Stainless Steel Reflector for Vr-1 Training Reactor

Abstract

Pressurized water reactors are typically surrounded in the radial direction by neutron reflectors made from stainless steel and water. These reflectors decrease neutron leakage and provide protection of pressure vessel from fast neutrons damaging its integrity. Such a radial reflector influences multiplication factor of the core and distribution of neutron flux and fission power inside the core. All these effects can be analyzed by full-core simulations using macroscopic constants. Methodology for generation of the macroscopic constants for non-fuel regions will be tested for new stainless steel reflectors at the VR-1 reactor. Rods from SS 304l material will be used for construction of radial reflectors for the VR-1 reactor. They will be design to generate sufficient measurable response in selected core characteristics. The study is focused on core power distribution and reactivity worth of absorbing rods in a VR-1 reactor core. The core typically consists of about 20 IRT-4M fuel assemblies and seven absorbing rods UR-70. Replacing water surrounding the core by several reflector assemblies containing stainless steel will influence leakage and distribution of neutrons inside the core. The current analysis deals with local effects and employs the sensitivity study to discover the nature of reflectors’ impact on the reactor core. These effects were studied even for several past VR-1 reactor core configurations. All calculations were carried out in Serpent2 Monte-Carlo code with various evaluated libraries: ENDF/B-VII.1, ENDF/B-VIII.0, and JEFF-3.3 data.

A feasibility study of SMART reactor power performance optimizations-part 2: Reflector material selection

“…Usually, Heavy metal materials are difficult to slow down neutrons, but they can shield the radiation from the core. The application of stainless steel as a neutron reflector has been well studied (Frybort et al, 2020). Tungsten carbide (WC) has a very high melting point at 2870 °C, which was a neutron reflector for a nuclear weapon in the early stage of nuclear power development.…”