Flattening of the Power Distribution in the HTGR Core with Structured Control Rods

Michał Górkiewicz and Jerzy Cetnar
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Michał Górkiewicz: National Center for Nuclear Research, Division of Nuclear Energy and Environmental Studies, Andrzeja Sołtana 7, 05-400 Otwock, Poland
Jerzy Cetnar: National Center for Nuclear Research, Division of Nuclear Energy and Environmental Studies, Andrzeja Sołtana 7, 05-400 Otwock, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 21, 1-14

Abstract: Control rods (CRs) have a significant influence on reactor performance. Withdrawal of a control rod leaves a region of the core significantly changed due to lack of absorber, leading to increased fission rate and later to Xe135 buildup. In this paper, an innovative concept of structured control rods made of tungsten is studied. It is demonstrated that the radial division of control rods made of tungsten can effectively compensate for the reactivity loss during the irradiation cycle of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) with a prismatic core while flattening the core power distribution. Implementation of the radial division of control rods enables an operator to reduce this effect in terms of axial power because the absorber is not completely removed from a reactor region, but its amount is reduced. The results obtained from the characteristic evolution of the reactor core for CRs with a structured design in the burnup calculation using the refined timestep scheme show a very stable core evolution with a reasonably low deviation of the power density and Xe135 concentration from the average values. It is very important that all the distributions improve with burnup.

Keywords: HTGR core design; control rods; Xe135 oscillations; tungsten; MC burnup calculations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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