Measurement of temperature effect on low enrichment STACY heterogeneous core

Watanabe, Shoichi; Yamamoto, Toshihiro; Miyoshi, Yoshinori

Temperature effect is a main factor which affects the transient characteristics at a criticality accident. A series of reactivity effects due to changes in fuel temperatures were measured for two kinds of STACY heterogeneous lattice configurations. The core was composed of LWR-type fuel rod array and low-enriched uranyl-nitrate-solution concerning the dissolver of the reprocessing facility for LWR spent fuel. The critical solution heights at various solution temperatures were measured. From the change of the critical water height with fuel temperature, the reactivity effect was evaluated by a critical-solution-level worth method. The temperature effect was also calculated by using SRAC and the transport calculation code TWODANT. The experimental value was estimated to be -2.0 cent/C for the case "2.1cm-pitch", and -2.5 cent/C for the case "1.5cm-pitch". The calculated results gave agreement with the experiments within 10%.