On the application of sirer-ADS in the simulation of transients in accelerator driven system (ADS)

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Rubens Souza dos
• Data de Publicação: 2007
• Outros Autores: Maiorino, José Rubens, Instituto de Engenharia Nuclear, Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares
• Tipo de documento: Artigo de conferência
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do IEN
• Texto Completo: http://carpedien.ien.gov.br:8080/handle/ien/2512
• topic: INAC 2007; Accelerator Driven System; SIRER-ADS; Transuranic elements; Simulation transients

An innovative reactor proposed to be used as an incinerator of Minor Actinides (MAs) like Np, Am and Cm is in progress. This technology, named Accelerator Driven System (ADS), consists in a subcritical core, having a central region where there is a target, as Lead-Bismuth Eutectic (LBE), which suffers collisions with a proton beam from an accelerator. The collisions produce neutrons depending of the proton energies. These fast neutrons produce fissions in the fuel and some of them are captured at the blanket, which surrounds the fuel region, for transmuting the transuranic elements (TRUs). Apparently this reactor is intrinsically safe, as compared with thermal ones, but the control of the reactor is based on the proton beam, which does not depend on intrinsic or internal control rod. Even so, in the scope of the development of ADS, benchmark problems have been proposed by Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) to analyze some transients that may occur due to variation in the current of the accelerator as well as perturbation in the subcritical core. In this paper it is shown the application of SIRERADS code on one of the benchmarks. In our application we identified an error on the wetted perimeter for the channel, as specified in the benchmark. Of course that leads different results. Because of that, some extra calculations are made to validate SIRER-ADS showing good agreement with the analytical solution. Calculations with the correct perimeter and the benchmark one are shown. In both cases SIRER-ADS exhibits consistent results.