Neutronic design and analysis of advanced long-cycle boron-free operation of a small modular reactor core with particle type burnable poison rods

Yoo, Ho

doi:10.1002/er.4207

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…With regard to other soluble boron‐free SMPWR designs, such as SHELF, ABV‐6M, NuScale, mPower, CAREM, SMART, KLT‐40S, RITM‐200, VK‐300, KLT‐40S, RITM‐200, IMR, 1 SMR with Big‐T, 5 and SMR with particle‐type burnable poison, 2,3,6 the singular feature of the newly designed SMPWR is a long‐cycle operation through the use of ring‐type burnable absorber (R‐BA) 7‐9 and adjuster CRs with axially‐heterogeneous compositions. Unlike the previous SMPWR design with R‐BA in which Zr‐ 167 Er and “inside coating” (Fuel‐BA‐Cladding) are utilized, the proposed SMPWR design uses gadolinium and “outside coating” (Fuel‐Cladding‐BA) as the BA material and geometry, respectively, to improve the manufacturing feasibility; additionally, the target cycle length is set to 50 months instead of 36 months 8 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual design of long‐cycle boron‐free small modular pressurized water reactor with control rod operation

et al. 2020

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Summary This paper presents a new conceptual design of soluble‐boron‐free small modular pressurized water reactor (SMPWR) core with the following singular features: long operation cycle, axially heterogeneous adjuster control rods, and ring‐type burnable absorbers (R‐BAs) coated on the outside of cladding materials. The core loads 37 Westinghouse‐type 17 × 17 fuel assemblies (FAs) of active fuel height 200 cm and produces 180 MW of nominal thermal power during a cycle length of 1555 effective full power days (EFPDs). Three types of burnable absorbers (BAs) are used to address the excess reactivity and obtain a long cycle: 2 w/o and 8 w/o enriched Gd2O3 integral‐type BA (IBA), natural gadolinium R‐BA, and 80 w/o enriched 10B Al2O3/B4C wet annular burnable absorber (WABA). Two types of 200 cm long axially heterogeneous adjuster control rods are used to control the reactivity and the offset in axial power distribution. The first rod type adopts HfB2 with 80 w/o enriched 10B for the bottom 140 cm and stainless steel for the top 60 cm. The second rod type uses HfB2 (natural boron) for the bottom 100 cm and HfB2 (80 w/o enriched 10B) for the top 100 cm. A detailed safety parameter analysis is conducted to verify the imposed design limits, namely, axial shape index of less than ±0.4, 3D power peaking factor of smaller than 5.09, required shutdown margin of greater than 3000 pcm, and negative isothermal temperature coefficient during the entire reactor operation. It is successfully demonstrated that the proposed novel SMPWR design satisfies all the design limits and the target cycle length of 1500 EFPDs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual design of long‐cycle boron‐free small modular pressurized water reactor with control rod operation

et al. 2020

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“…Recently, there have been increasing interest in SMRs because they can fulfill the need for flexible power generation for a wide range of applications and have improved safety features such as passive safety and natural circulation, and low risk in capital investment, in comparison with large scale commercial PWRs 15,16 …”

Section: Introdutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual design of a long cycle small modular reactor core with annular UO ₂ and FCM ( TRU ) fuels

Choi

Kwon

2020

Int J Energy Res

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Summary In this work, new small modular reactor (SMR) core using annular UO2 and FCM (TRU [Transuranics]) fuels is conceptually suggested for TRU consumption and effective power generation, and neutronic and thermal hydraulics analyses are performed to show its feasibility and performances. In this core concept, the annular fuels previously suggested are combined with TRU containing FCM annular fuels to improve economics and safety of SMR, and to reduce high radiotoxicity TRU nuclides by combing superior cooling performance of annular fuel, and high thermal conductivity and superior irradiation performances of FCM fuel. In addition, FeCrAl cladding is employed as the accident tolerant cladding to reduce the oxidation and hydrogen generation under transients. The basic objective of this work is to show if a long cycle SMR core with increased power rating and considerable TRU consumption rate can be designed with these advanced fuels and accident tolerant FeCrAl cladding. From the analysis, it was shown that the SMR core with 15% power increase can be designed to have 22 months cycle length and a ~ 16% net TRU consumption rate over all the discharged fuel assemblies.

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“…We consider PWR technology since this has a proven record in maritime applications, and SBF (Yoo and Hong, 2018) operation for operational simplicity. The elimination of soluble boron has advantages in terms of simplification (removal of pipes, pumps and purification systems), space saving, the elimination of the corrosive e↵ects of soluble boron, and improved safety e↵ects (improvement of the moderator temperature coe cient and elimination of an entire class of boron dilution accidents (Kim et al, 1998)).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small modular reactor core design for civil marine propulsion using micro-heterogeneous duplex fuel. Part II: whole-core analysis

Alam

Ridwan

Kumar

et al. 2019

Nuclear Engineering and Design

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In an e↵ort to de-carbonise commercial freight shipping, there is growing interest in the possibility of using nuclear propulsion systems. In this reactor physics study, we seek to design a soluble-boron-free (SBF) and low-enriched uranium (LEU) (<20% 235 U enrichment) civil nuclear marine propulsion small modular reactor (SMR) core that provides at least 15 e↵ective full-power-years (EFPY) life at 333 MWth using 18% 235 U enriched micro-heterogeneous ThO 2 -UO 2 duplex fuel and 15% 235 U enriched homogeneously mixed all-UO 2 fuel. We use WIMS to develop subassembly designs and PANTHER to examine whole-core arrangements.The assembly-level behaviours of candidate burnable poison (BP) materials and control rods are investigated. We examine gadolinia (Gd 2 O 3 ), erbia (Er 2 O 3 ) and ZrB 2 integral fuel burnable absorber (IFBA) as BPs. We arrive at a design with the candidate fuels loaded into 13⇥13 assemblies using IFBA pins for reactivity control. Taking advantage of self-shielding e↵ects, this design maintains low and stable assembly reactivity with relatively little burnup penalty. Thorium-based duplex fuel o↵ers better performance than all-UO 2 fuel with all BP options considered. Duplex fuel has ⇠20% lower reactivity swing and, in consequence, lower initial reactivity than all-UO 2 fuel. The lower initial reactivity and smaller reactivity swing make the task of reactivity control through BP design easier in the thorium-rich duplex core. For control rod design, we examine boron carbide (B 4 C), hafnium, and Ag-In-Cd alloy. All the candidate materials exhibit greater rod worth for the duplex design. For both fuels, B 4 C has the highest rod worth. In particular, one of the major objectives of this study is to o↵er/explore a thorium-based candidate alternative fuel platform for the proposed marine core. It is proven by literature reviews that the ability of the duplex fuel was never explored in the context of a single-batch, LEU, SBF, long-life SMR core. In this regard, the motivation of this paper is to observe the neutronic performance of the proposed duplex fuel with respect to the UO 2 fuel and 'open the option' of designing the functional cores with both the duplex and UO 2 fuel cores.A companion paper will examine key physics and core safety analysis parameters in the whole-core environment.

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Neutronic design and analysis of advanced long-cycle boron-free operation of a small modular reactor core with particle type burnable poison rods

Cited by 6 publications

References 7 publications

Conceptual design of long‐cycle boron‐free small modular pressurized water reactor with control rod operation

Conceptual design of long‐cycle boron‐free small modular pressurized water reactor with control rod operation

Conceptual design of a long cycle small modular reactor core with annular UO ₂ and FCM ( TRU ) fuels

Small modular reactor core design for civil marine propulsion using micro-heterogeneous duplex fuel. Part II: whole-core analysis

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Neutronic design and analysis of advanced long-cycle boron-free operation of a small modular reactor core with particle type burnable poison rods

Cited by 6 publications

References 7 publications

Conceptual design of long‐cycle boron‐free small modular pressurized water reactor with control rod operation

Conceptual design of long‐cycle boron‐free small modular pressurized water reactor with control rod operation

Conceptual design of a long cycle small modular reactor core with annular UO 2 and FCM ( TRU ) fuels

Small modular reactor core design for civil marine propulsion using micro-heterogeneous duplex fuel. Part II: whole-core analysis

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Conceptual design of a long cycle small modular reactor core with annular UO ₂ and FCM ( TRU ) fuels