Preliminary experiment in a graphite-moderated core to avoid full mock-up experiment for the future first commercial HTGR

沖田 将一朗; 深谷 裕司; 左近 敦士*; 佐野 忠史*; 高橋 佳之*; 宇根崎 博信*

Proceedings of International Conference on Physics of Reactors 2022 (PHYSOR 2022) (Internet), 9 Pages, 2022/05

As a commercial reactor require high economic efficiency, the High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) would be a more attractive proposition if a full mock-up experiment for the first commercial HTGR could be avoided in the future. In this paper, preliminary experiments were conducted in order to obtain basic core characteristics data, such as the criticality, necessary to demonstrate the applicability of a generalized bias factor method to neutronic design of HTGR. The graphite-moderated core with only highly enriched uranium fuels in the B-rack of Kyoto University Criticality Assembly (KUCA) was configured as a reference core. The C/E-1 values (Calculation/Experiment -1 values) for the keff values at the three critical states and the thermal neutron spectra with the major nuclear data libraries, such as JENDL-4.0, JEFF-3.2, ENDF/B-VII.1, and ENDF/B-VIII.0, were calculated for the core. The result shows that the keff values are overestimated for JEFF-3.2, ENDF/B-VII.1, and ENDF/B-VIII.0 by 0.14% - 0.18%, while they are underestimated for JENDL-4.0 by 0.07% - 0.09%. The calculation result with JENDL-4.0 shows a slightly better agreement with this experiment than the others. In addition, the thermal neutron spectrum calculated with ENDF/B-VIII.0 is softer than the others. The Thermal Scattering Law (TSL) data of graphite stored in ENDF/B-VIII.0 suggests that the thermal neutron spectrum become softer than that of traditional TSL data stored in the others. The core characteristics of the reference core, which are necessary for future studies, were obtained.