Neutronic design of a fluidized bed reactor

Conference · Wed Sep 15 04:00:00 EDT 1999

OSTI ID:23142180

Kloosterman, J. L.; Van Dam, H.; Golovko, V. V.; Van der Hagen, T. H.J.J. ^[1]; Mudde, R. F. ^[2]

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1. Delft University of Technology, Interfaculty Reactor Institute - IRI, Mekelweg 15, NL-2629 JB Delft (Netherlands)
2. Delft University of Technology, Kramers Laboratorium voor Fysische Technologie, Prins Bemardlaan 6, NL-2628 BW Delft (Netherlands)

FLUBER is a conceptual design of a fluidized bed reactor, which consists of TRISO coated fuel particles with outer diameter of 1 mm contained in a graphite-walled cavity. When the helium coolant starts to flow in upward direction, the particle bed gets fluidized and reactivity increases due to the influence of the reflector. The maximum reactivity that can be introduced this way is limited, because the reactor becomes subcritical again due to increased neutron leakage when the particle bed expands further. As a result, the reactor is critical only for a specific range of coolant flow rate, which limits inherently the maximum power that can be generated. The reactivity coefficients of temperature are calculated for the fuel, moderator and reflector zones. The first two are negative, the last one positive, but the overall effect is negative. The contributions to the temperature coefficients are calculated for each factor of the four-factor formula, showing that the Doppler effect dominates the temperature coefficient of the fuel, and that spectral shift effects dominate the temperature coefficient of the moderator. Experiments have shown that the particle flow in the core region is highly turbulent. The influence of three fuel particle density distributions on reactivity is investigated. Although different, all distributions show the same trends.

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society - ANS, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 23142180
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
COATED FUEL PARTICLES
COOLANTS
DENSITY
DOPPLER EFFECT
FLOW RATE
FLUIDIZED BED REACTORS
GRAPHITE
HELIUM
MODERATORS
NEUTRON LEAKAGE
NUCLEAR FUELS
REACTOR DESIGN
SPECTRAL SHIFT
TEMPERATURE COEFFICIENT