A pragmatic approach towards designing a second shutdown system for Tehran research reactor

Abstract

One second shutdown system is proposed for the Tehran Research Reactor to achieve the goal of higher safety in compliance with current operational requirements and regulations and improve the overall reliability of the reactor shutdown system. The proposed second shutdown system is a diverse, independent shutdown system compared to the existing rod based one that intends to achieve and maintain sub-criticality condition with an enough shutdown margin in many of abnormal situations. It is designed as much as practical based on neutron absorber solution injection into the existing core while the changes and interferences with the existing core structure are kept to a minimum. Core neutronic calculations were performed using MCNPX 2.6.0 and MTR_PC package for the current operational core equipped with the second shutdown system, and one experiment was conducted in the Tehran Research Reactor to test the neutronic calculations. A good agreement was seen between theoretical results and experimental ones. In addition, capability of the second shutdown system in the case of occurrence of design basis accident in the Tehran Research Reactor is demonstrated using PARET program.