Analyses on the BFS critical experiments; an analysis on the BFS-62-3A and 62-4 cores

Hazama, Taira ; not registered; Iwai, Takehiko*; Sato, Wakaei*

In order to support the Russian excess weapons plutonium disposition program, the intemational collaboration has started between Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC) and Russian Institute of Physics and Power Engineering(IPPE). In the frame of the collaboration, analyses have been carried out for a series of critical experiments that simulate BN-600 (Russian commercial fast reactor). This report summarizes analysis results of the critical expeliments on BFS-62-3A and BFS-62-4 cores. BFS-62-3A core models BN-600 hybrid core in which the present BN-600 core is modified so as to partially load MOX fuel assemblies and replace the blanket region with stainless steel. BFS-62-4 core has the same layout as BFS-62-3A core except that the blanket region is not replaced. The analyses were performed with JNC standard method developed in the analysis of JUPITER experiment. The results show a good agreement with experimental values for the criticality and the reaction rate ratio. For the control rod worth and the reaction rate distribution, the results for BFS-62-4 core are also reasonable. However, for BFS-62-3A, analysis results overestimate the reaction rate in the stainless steel region by 20% and underestimate reactivity worth for one of the control rods by 10%. For the sodium void reactivity, underestimation of more than 20% were observed, but the disagreement were successfully solved by adopting a newly developed nuclear constant set with a fine group structure. In addition, analysis accuracies were compared among a series of analyses and it was confirmed that the introduction of MOX fuel assemblies does not affect the accuracy. The final goal of the work is to reflect the analysis results for designing BN-600 hybrid core. Then similarity was investigated between BFS-62-3A core and BN-600 hybrid core. A good similarity was found in the neutron spectrum, the fission reaction ratio, the fission reaction distribution, and the control rod worth. However, ...