Preparation of methods to calculate pin-wise intra-subassembly power density distribution of a new in-pile experimental reactor for FBR safety research

Mizuno, Masahiro*; Uto, Nariaki  

A design study of a new in-pile experimental reactor, SERAPH (Safety Engineering Reactor for Accident PHenomenology), for FBR safety research has progressed at JNC (Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute). SERAPH is intended for various in-pile experiments to be performed under steady state and various transient operation modes. Heavy water is selected as a coolant material for heat removal of the SERAPH driver core during the experiments. Control rods are needed to conduct the experiments, and a control rod with heavy water follower is considered as one of the promising ideas and is now under investigation. In this idea, care must be taken to avoid production of local power peaks which are caused by neutron moderation in the follower and may appear in the vicinity of the boundary between the control rod and its neighboring fuel subassembly, since deuterium has an excellently high moderation power. Therefore, preparation of some methods of evaluating power density distribution in detail is required for control rod design. This report describes preparation of a set of neutronic calculation methods to evaluate intra-subassembly power density distribution including local power peaks around a control rod. A two-dimensional S transport calculation code TWOTRAN-II is selected as a tool for evaluating neutron transport phenomena near the control rod with no cares for statistical influence. A two-dimensional rectangular super-cell model, which is a physical model composed of a control rod and its surrounding fifteen fuel sub-assemblies, and a method to construct the super-cell model based on thirteen unit cells are created, considering neutron mean free path near a control rod. Two processing tools are newly developed to generate a material region map and mesh boundaries for an efficient super-cell construction procedure and to obtain pin-wise power densities based on calculated mesh-wise neutron flux data. The results in this report are expected to be ...