The influence of full-core deflection to the nodalized cross sections
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Contributors
Abstract
This article considers the static influence of the fuel assembly displacement to the nodalized macroscopic cross sections (XS) under assumption of the homogenized collective displacement of all fuel assemblies (full-core deflection) in 2-dimensional geometry. The considered homogeneous core composition is extremely simple and don't take into account the core shroud and its effect. The reason for that is to focus on the qualitative effects only of the full-core displacement under a fixed node grid to XS. This investigation contributes to an ongoing work presented in [1]. The general motivation is to improve the understanding of the phenomena of cycle-by-cycle increase of the neutron flux fluctuation in some KWU built pressurized water reactors (PWR) [7] [5]. The understanding of this phenomenon needs an upgrade of reactor-system simulation codes by taking into account the influence of mechanical deflection of core internals like fuel assemblies. The preferred method, followed in this work [1], is to take into account the fuel assembly deflection by the variation of XS and other group constant parameters like discontinue factors. Such a correlation should be implemented in the reactor-system simulation code DYN3D [4][3] to reproduce the neutron flux fluctuations induced by moved fuel assemblies [1]. The static correlation, which is topic of this paper, can be interpreted as an upper limit case for the dynamic influence of fuel assembly motion if the time constants of motion go to infinity. The focus is set on the variation of total, absorption and transport XS in a generic PWR core, composed of 193 fuel assemblies of the same type. This investigation was performed with the Monte-Carlo method, i. e. with the probabilistic simulation code Serpent 2 [8]. The most obvious effect of full-core deflection by 2 mm with a fixed node grid is an asymmetric variation of XS along the displacement direction. The XS variation follows an anti-symmetric third order polynomial fit and ranges between ±1.1 % (XSfastabs), depending on the XS type and energy group. If the node grid is shifted with the fuel assembly grid, no significant XS variation was detected.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages | 2028-2041 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Conference
Title | 2018 International Conference on Physics of Reactors: Reactor Physics Paving the Way Towards More Efficient Systems, PHYSOR 2018 |
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Duration | 22 - 26 April 2018 |
City | Cancun |
Country | Mexico |
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- Core deflection, Correlation between opposite detectors, KWU PWR, Nodalized cross sections, Out-Of-Phase behavior