Safety assessment and management of spent nuclear fuel for TRIGA mark II research reactor
Author:
Heritier Beya1, Mahmoud Rowayda F.2, El Saghir Ahmed3, Shaat Mohamed K.2, Badawi Alya3
Affiliation:
1. Commissariat Général à l’Energie Atomique (CGEA) , Kinshasa , DR Congo 2. Reactors Department, Atomic Reactors Division , Nuclear Research Center, Egyptian Atomic, Energy Authority (EAEA) , Cairo , Egypt 3. Nuclear Engineering, Department Faculty of Engineering , Alexandria University , Alexandria , Egypt
Abstract
Abstract
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has a TRIGA mark II research reactor called TRICO II, its design power is 1.00 MW. The reactor was in extended shutdown state since November 2004. The DRC government has decided to resume its operation using the last uploaded core. One of the safety features to be determined before putting the spent fuel into the reactor core is the calculation of its excess reactivity, radionuclide inventories as well as its discharge burn-up. The spent fuel was modeled and simulated by using Monte Carlo software, MCNPX code. The input data and the horizontal and vertical modeling for the fuel pins, control rods and moderator were done. The model results were validated by calculating the effective delayed neutron fraction (β
eff) and the worth of the control rods. The results of the criticality and fuel burn-up were compared with the reference design parameters and with the experimental measurements and it were found in good agreement. The calculations showed that the last uploaded core has 47.00 g of 235U which represent only 2% of fissile materials. The depletion analysis results showed that the highest radio-activities come from 151Sm, 137Cs, 90Y, 90Sr and 85Kr.
Publisher
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Subject
Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality,General Materials Science,Nuclear Energy and Engineering,Nuclear and High Energy Physics,Radiation
Reference19 articles.
1. Alyson, K. (2012). Determination of a calculation bias in the MCNP model of the OSTR, Master thesis. Oregon State University, Oregon, USA. 2. Antti, R. and Kotiluoto, P. (2016). FIR1TRIGA activity inventories for decommissioning planning, 194. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, pp. 28–38. 3. Böck, H. and Khan, R. (2010). Neutronics analysis of the TRIGA Vienna mixed core. Vienna, Austria, Vienna University of Technology/Atominstitute stadionallee 2. 4. Beya, H. (2019). Safety assessment and cost estimates for the decommissioning of D. R. Congo research reactor (TRICO II), M.Sc. Thesis dissertation, Alexandria, Egypt, Nuclear & Radiation Eng. Dept., Fac. Eng., Alex. Univ. 5. Borio di Tigliole, A., Cammi, A., Clemenza, M., Memoli, V., Pattavina, L., and Previtali, E. (2010). Benchmark evaluation of reactor critical parameters and neutron fluxes distributions at zero power for the TRIGA Mark II reactor of the University of pavia using the Monte Carlo code MCNP. Prog. Nucl. Energy 52: 494–502, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2009.11.002.
|
|