Sodium void reactivity comparison for advanced liquid-metal reactor fuels
- Westinghouse Hanford Co., Richland, WA (United States)
The advanced liquid-metal reactor (ALMR) program in the US is based on metal as the reference fuel because of its favorable neutronic feedback characteristics for passive safety. Favorable relationships exist between core performance and safety that provide a passively safe metal fuel system with a large margin to sodium boiling. Because of this, the reduction of the positive sodium void coefficient of reactivity is not an overriding design objective. A positive sodium void effect with metal fuel is due to neutron spectral hardening that dominates capture and leakage changes during sodium voiding. This can produce as much as 5-$ positive sodium void reactivity for mixed plutonium-uranium fuel in a smaller core designed for a near-zero burnup reactivity swing. It is possible to reduce the positive void feedback and its effect on hypothetical loss-of-flow (LOF) scenarios with a commensurate increase in burnup swing. However, metal fuel's small Doppler coefficient, excellent fuel conductivity, and resultant small temperature gradients provide less reactivity feedback to handle postulated transient overpower (TOP) events for cores with significant burnup reactivity swings. The purpose of this work was to study the relationship between reduction of the sodium void and the resultant increase in the burnup reactivity swing for an ALMR modeled with metal, nitride, and oxide fuel.
- OSTI ID:
- 5854080
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-910603-; CODEN: TANSA
- Journal Information:
- Transactions of the American Nuclear Society; (United States), Vol. 63; Conference: Annual meeting of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), Orlando, FL (United States), 2-6 Jun 1991; ISSN 0003-018X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
LIQUID METAL COOLED REACTORS
REACTOR KINETICS
REACTOR SAFETY
ALLOY NUCLEAR FUELS
BURNUP
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DESIGN
DOPPLER EFFECT
ENGINEERED SAFETY SYSTEMS
LOSS OF FLOW
MIXED NITRIDE FUELS
MIXED OXIDE FUELS
NUCLEAR DATA COLLECTIONS
REACTIVITY
REACTOR CORES
TRANSIENT OVERPOWER ACCIDENTS
USA
VOID FRACTION
ACCIDENTS
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
ENERGY SOURCES
EVALUATION
FUELS
KINETICS
MATERIALS
NORTH AMERICA
NUCLEAR FUELS
REACTOR ACCIDENTS
REACTOR COMPONENTS
REACTOR MATERIALS
REACTORS
SAFETY
SOLID FUELS
220900* - Nuclear Reactor Technology- Reactor Safety
210500 - Power Reactors
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