On the evaluation of pebble bed reactor critical experiments using the PEBBED code
The PEBBED pebble bed reactor fuel management code under development at the Idaho National Laboratory is designed for rapid design and analysis of pebble bed high temperature reactors (PBRs). Embedded within the code are the THERMIX-KONVEK thermal fluid solver and the COMBINE-7 spectrum generation code for inline cross section homogenization. Because 1D symmetry can be found at each stage of core heterogeneity; spherical at TRISO and pebble levels, and cylindrical at the control rod and core levels, the 1-D transport capability of ANISN is assumed to be sufficient in most cases for generating flux solutions for cross section homogenization. Furthermore, it is fast enough to be executed during the analysis or the equilibrium core. Multi-group diffusion-based design codes such as PEBBED and VSOP are not expected to yield the accuracy and resolution of continuous energy Monte Carlo codes for evaluation of critical experiments. Nonetheless, if the preparation of multigroup cross sections can adequately capture the physics of the mixing of PBR fuel elements and leakage from the core, reasonable results may be obtained. In this paper, results of the application of PEBBED to two critical experiments (HTR Proteus and HTR-10) and associated computational models are presented. The embedded 1-D transport solver is shown to capture the double heterogeneity of the pebble fuel in unit cell calculations. Eigenvalue calculations of a whole core are more challenging, particularly if the boron concentration is uncertain. The sensitivity of major safety parameters to variations in modeling assumptions, however, is shown to be minimal. The embedded transport solver can also be used to obtain control rod worths but only with adjustment of the local spectrum. Results are compared to those of other codes as well as Core 4 of the HTR-Proteus experiment which contains partially inserted rods. They indicate the need for a reference solution to adjust the radius of the graphite in the control rod unit cell or some other method for obtaining the correct spectrum in these regions.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1167536
- Report Number(s):
- INL/CON-14-32476; TRN: US1500004
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 7. International topical meeting on high temperature reactor technology (HTR 2014), WeiHai (China), 27-31 Oct 2014
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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