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Title: Temperature feedback of TRIGA MARK-II fuel

Journal Article · · AIP Conference Proceedings
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4940069· OSTI ID:22494524
; ;  [1]
  1. Malaysia Nuclear Agency, Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor (Malaysia)

We study the amount of temperature feedback on reactivity for the three types of TRIGA fuel i.. ST8, ST12 and LEU fuel, are used in the TRIGA MARK II reactor in Malaysia Nuclear Agency. We employ WIMSD-5B for the calculation of kin f for a single TRIGA fuel surrounded by water. Typical calculations of TRIGA fuel reactivity are usually limited to ST8 fuel, but in this paper our investigation extends to ST12 and LEU fuel. We look at the kin f of our model at various fuel temperatures and calculate the amount reactivity removed. In one instance, the water temperature is kept at room temperature of 300K to simulate sudden reactivity increase from startup. In another instance, we simulate the sudden temperature increase during normal operation where the water temperature is approximately 320K while observing the kin f at various fuel temperatures. For accidents, two cases are simulated. The first case is for water temperature at 370K and the other is without any water. We observe that the higher Uranium content fuel such as the ST12 and LEU have much smaller contribution to the reactivity in comparison to the often studied ST8 fuel. In fact the negative reactivity coefficient for LEU fuel at high temperature in water is only slightly larger to the negative reactivity coefficient for ST8 fuel in void. The performance of ST8 fuel in terms of negative reactivity coefficient is cut almost by half when it is in void. These results are essential in the safety evaluation of the reactor and should be carefully considered when choices of fuel for core reconfiguration are made.

OSTI ID:
22494524
Journal Information:
AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1704, Issue 1; Conference: iNuSTEC2015: International muclear science, technology and engineering conference 2015, Negeri Sembilan (Malaysia), 17-19 Aug 2015; Other Information: (c) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English