https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202124717008
LOW TEMPERATURE EFFECTS ON PWR FUEL ASSEMBLY CRITICALITY CALCULATIONS
Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS) gGmbH, Boltzmannstraße 14, 85748 Garching, Germany
Matthias.Behler@grs.de
Volker.Hannstein@grs.de
Fabian.Sommer@grs.de
Published online: 22 February 2021
One of the parameters affecting the neutron multiplication factor keff of a system containing fissile material is the system temperature. Therefore, the effect of temperature on criticality safety analyses is an area of international interest. In this context, the Working Party on Nuclear Criticality Safety (WPNCS) of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) formed a subgroup to define and execute a code-to-code comparison benchmark to investigate the effect of temperature on keff for PWR fuel assemblies. Two configurations of a generic water-moderated PWR fuel assembly were analysed at different temperatures between 233 K and 588 K, and with different assembly burnups. Based on this benchmark, GRS performed an additional study to investigate the impact of the moderator densities, the neutron reaction cross sections and the thermal scattering data on keff separately.
The benchmark results show the expected decrease of keff with temperature and a considerable jump in keff at the phase transition of the moderator. The additional investigation demonstrates that the jump in keff is mainly caused by the change of the moderator density due to the phase transition. The change of the thermal scattering data due to the phase transitions leads to a similar but smaller jump in keff. Furthermore, the actual impact of the different parameters on keff depend strongly on the considered fuel assembly configuration.
Key words: criticality safety / neutron multiplication factor / thermal scattering data / temperature effect
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
