A Survey of Control Rod Measurements in ZPPR and Their Analysis
- Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, IL (United States)
The accurate prediction of control rod worths has been of great concern in the United States. Optimum control configurations need to balance several often conflicting requirements of control through the operating cycle, while maintaining acceptable power shapes, safety considerations of overriding importance, together with seeking economy by minimizing the number of rods, reducing boron enrichment and lengthening replacement intervals. After control and shutdown requirements have been met, the most important safety concern is the transient overpower condition (TOP) which may be initiated by uncontrolled run-out of a primary rod. Stringent criteria for the primary and secondary systems may be that they are independently capable of shutting down the reactor even with one rod stuck. The TOP initiator may be greatly enhanced by control rod interaction effects. Control rod effects may have a strong impact on core design. For example, work on the integral fast reactor with metallic fuel at ANL has studied core designs which minimize the TOP reactivity by maintaining a minimum primary control bank insertion through tailoring the internal breeding gain. The predicted control rod worths are very sensitive to the calculation methods used and to the accuracy of the basic nuclear data files. Required accuracies have been achieved only through the use of critical experiments on the ZPR and ZPPR facilities. Experiments on ZPR-3 and ZPR-9 produced satisfactory control predictions for the SEFOR, EBR-II and FFTF reactors. This document provides a survey of control rod measurements and compares calculated and experimental results.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP); USDOE Nuclear Energy Programs
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-31109-ENG-38
- OSTI ID:
- 6493921
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-881252-1; ON: DE89004199; TRN: 89-003835
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: IAEA Specialists' Meeting on Methods for Reactor Physics Calculations for Control Rods in Fast Reactors, Winfrith (United Kingdom), 6-8 Dec 1988; Other Information: Portions of this document are illegible in microfiche products
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
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REACTOR SAFETY
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