• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.869-877
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• 2020

A 24-month Advanced Power Reactor 1400 (APR1400) core with a very-low-boron (VLB) concentration has been investigated for an inherently safe and high-performance PWR in this work. To develop a high-performance APR1400 which is able to do the passive frequency control operation, VLB feature is essential. In this paper, the centrally-shielded burnable absorber (CSBA) is utilized for an efficient VLB operation in the 24-month cycle APR1400 core. This innovative design of the VLB APR1400 core includes the optimization of burnable absorber and loading pattern as well as axial cutback for a 24-month cycle operation. In addition to CSBA, an Er-doped guide thimble is also introduced for partial management of the excess reactivity and local peaking factor. To improve the neutron economy of the core, two alternative radial reflectors are adopted in this study, which are SS-304 and ZrO₂. The core reactivity and power distributions for a 2-batch equilibrium cycle are analyzed and compared for each reflector design. Numerical results show that a VLB core can be successfully designed with 24-month cycle and the cycle length is improved significantly with the alternative reflectors. The neutronic analyses are performed using the Monte Carlo Serpent code and 3-D diffusion code COREDAX-2 with the ENDF/B-VII.1.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.369-376
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• 2019

A complete solution for a soluble-boron-free (SBF) small modular reactor (SMR) is pursued with a new burnable absorber concept, namely centrally-shielded burnable absorber (CSBA). Neutronic flexibility of the CSBA design has been discussed with fuel assembly (FA) analyses. Major design parameters and goals of the SBF SMR are discussed in view of the reactor core design and three CSBA designs are introduced to achieve both a very low burnup reactivity swing (BRS) and minimal residual reactivity of the CSBA. It is demonstrated that the core achieves a long cycle length (~37 months) and high burnup (~30 GWd/tU), while the BRS is only about 1100 pcm and the radial power distribution is rather flat. This research also introduces a supplementary reactivity control mechanism using stainless steel as mechanical shim (MS) rod to obtain the criticality during normal operation. A further analysis is performed to investigate the local power peaking of the CSBA-loaded FA at MS-rodded condition. Moreover, a simple $B_4C$-based control rod arrangement is proposed to assure a sufficient shutdown margin even at the cold-zero-power condition. All calculations in this neutronic-thermal hydraulic coupled investigation of the 3D SBF SMR core are completed by a two-step Monte Carlo-diffusion hybrid methodology.